The document discusses the historical context and evolution of commedia dell'arte, highlighting its emergence as professional theatre during the high and late middle ages in Italy. It details the social and economic shifts, including the rise of urban centers, the development of education, and changes in class structures that influenced theatrical performance. The document also explores the characteristics of various stock characters in commedia dell'arte, their improvisational style, and the lasting impact this theatrical tradition has had on Western theatre.

1. A Crash Course
Assembled by Kate Meehan

2. (Because nothing ever happens in a vacuum.*)
 The advent of Commedia dell’Arte marks the rebirth of
professional theatre on Western Stages.
 Professional theatre requires a paying audience. Throughout
the early middle ages, this meant that performances were
restricted to the ruling classes, with common people only
participating as an act of benevolence by their lords.
 This also makes it very hard to be a professional actor if you’re
fond of eating regularly.
*Actually, a lot of totally awesome things happen in vacuums. That’s totally outside the scope of this document.

3. As the predominantly rural Early Middle Ages gave way
to the increasingly urban High and Late Middle Ages, you
wind up with a large number of urban tradespeople.
In the urban areas, the barter
system gave way to currency-based
economies, allowing
these tradespeople access to
income. More importantly –
DISPOSABLE income.
With the help of clever
merchants like the Medici,
urban centers in Italy
flourished as hubs of
Mediterranean trade.
Lookit how full up Italy is with cities!

4. That Italy was just
crawling with cities
is, in part, due to
the fact that it had
more or less an
unbroken tradition
of urban living,
even after the fall
of the Roman
Empire. Plus it’s
filled with natural
trading ports.
Also, check out Cordova and
Palermo, which flourished
under Muslim rule and
torpedoed once those regimes
were ousted.
Fun fact.

5. The rise of the city means it’s increasingly important
to have people who can read, write and do math just to
keep things organized.
The previous system of education,
entirely under the purview of the
church, made for sticky politics.
In the 12th Century, a number of
Teachers’ Guilds appeared to train
students to fill the need for clerks.
Three out of the five universities
founded in the 12th Century were in
Italy. These students learned
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music
theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
The University of Bologna (1088) was the first,
followed closely by the University of Oxford (1096)

6. Between 1310 and 1330, Europe experienced some of the worst weather in
the entirety of the Middle Ages. Winters were severe, and the summers
were cold and rainy, meaning farmers couldn’t evaporate sea salt to cure
their meats, and straw and hay could not be cured for livestock.
The story of Hansel and Gretel reflects a
cultural memory of this period, when it’s
faster to count periods of not-famine
than to recount the times when food
would’ve been scarce.
The weather did not get better.

7. As the Little
Ice Age took
effect, Alpine
glaciers
claimed the
most arable
farm lands,
including the
Po Valley in
Italy.
Famine in
those areas
pushed rural
people to flee to
the cities in
hope of food
and work.

8. Italy was composed of over 20 City-States
with tenuous relationships. None of them
had standing armies,* so fighting was done
by hired mercenaries (called Condottieri)
that were often foreign (Spanish!).
These mercenaries believed that dying
wasn’t exactly in their best interest, and as
soldiers for hire, their allegiance was not
exactly guaranteed.
Machievelli’s The Prince was written about one of
these charming fellows, who bullied his way into the
position of the Duke of Milan. One of his descendants
kicked off the Italian Wars, which more or less made
the first part of the 16th Century totally suck for all
Italians.
*Well, Venice had a navy. But that was for fighting Moorish pirates.

9. Inside these City-States was a fairly rigid class structure. Up top, cities
were ruled by either one ruler elected by an elite group of noblemen (called
the Doge in Venice and Genoa) or by a council of wealthy nobles.
Merchants worked hard to marry daughters to
noble families, and scrambled to climb the social
ranks.
Doge
Council
Merchants
Artisans
Servants
Tradespeople generally worked for
themselves in shops, and were members
of guilds that placed strict rules on
quality and price.
Servants could be anyone from
apprentices to hayseeds just in
from the countryside.

10. In other European countries, dowries often
took the form of land. In Italian city-states,
where land was at premium, dowries were in
cash. This meant that in large, Catholic
families, having more than one daughter
could spell financial ruin. Marrying below
your station meant public humiliation.
Convents required a dowry, but it was
substantially less than the going rate. By
1580, 60% of noble women lived in convents.
In Venice in particular, these forced nuns took their vows of celibacy very
loosely. After awhile, the church could no longer turn a blind eye to the
number of immaculate conceptions occurring in their convents. The Council
of Trent (1563) imposed a cloister, prompting a huge number of escape
attempts.

11. With noble women being shipped off in large numbers, noble men
needed socially acceptable ways to deal with certain… urges.
This gave rise to a powerful courtesan culture, with Cortigiane
Oneste (Honest Courtesans) becoming one of Venice’s most
fashionable exports. By the mid 16th century, Venice was
publishing directories of their most famous courtesans to
distribute to visiting nobility and wealthy merchants.
These women were expected to sing, play instruments, dance,
speak multiple languages, write poetry and understand politics. As
independent women with personal income, wit and political clout,
many of them turned to the developing Commedia dell’Arte,
leading troupes and using their extensive international client base
to expand their fame.

12. Excellent
question. Very
intelligent,
famous old dudes
are still arguing
over this.

13. Tied in with the ancient rituals of social inversions like the
Feast of Fools, Carnivale has a tradition of mask-wearing and
the elevation of chaos and revelry. Mattaccino, the egg thrower,
is the oldest mask of the Venetian Carnival, first recorded in
1268.
Some believe that the three primary characters targeted in
Carnivale revelries: the man in charge, the fool, and the
courtesan, evolved into the Commedia stock characters.

14. Others believe that it naturally evolved in the crowded markets
of the piazza. As the markets were flooded with rural
immigrants frantic to sell their handicrafts, more was needed to
stand out from your competition.
A basket weaver, say,
began to tell jokes to
attract a crowd. A
fishmonger brought his
brother to do backflips.
Soon, they realized that
the play was the
commodity, and eschewed
their handiwork.
(It’s more than likely a combination of
the two, but we will probably never
know. )

16. Traditionally, Commedia
productions are improvised around a
loose scenario, which was literally a
list of plot points pinned to the
scene.
The performers played one stock
characters almost exclusively,
trading roles only if they had grown
too old for their former role.*
The improvisation appeared more polished because the performers had
some pre-rehearsed tricks up their sleeves:
Lazzi (singular lazzo) are bits of physical comedic business.
Concetti (singular concetto) are generic character-based monologues.
*Usually Pantalone is played by the youngest actor, both to add more levity and because his movement is
hard to pull off with a bad back.

17. Commedia is also a masked
performance style, with masks
that evolved over time to represent
character types.
It relies heavily on broad, precise
physicality that is ideal for
performances outdoors or in large
theatres.
Plays tend toward the
melodramatic, with mistaken
identities, star-crossed lovers,
cross dressing, disguises, and
misunderstandings forming the
cornerstones of their plot devices.

18. All that backstory you were
wondering why I included? A lot
of it comes into play here.

19. Doge
Nobles
Merchants
Artisans
Servants
Peasants
Remember this handy chart?
In the beginning, most shows primarily involved
two characters – Magnifico and Zanni,*
representing the Doge and the Peasants.
These shows were hilarious to everyone in the middle social tiers, but not
so much to the Doge.
Turns out, punishment
for having a smart mouth
in the Renaissance is less
fun than depicted at
modern Renaissance
Faires.
* Magnifico is a Venetian honorific, usually reserved for its top echelon. Zanni is a derivative of Gianni, a
popular name out in the Lombardi and Venetian countryside. These names are literally what the very rich
and the very poor would have called themselves.

20. The revised plan focused on the merchants (especially the old ones,
because old people smell weird), the servants (as they could be
protagonists!) and the peasants.
These characters were broken into two categories that are important
for our purposes:
The Vecchi: the old men with money and power.*
The Zanni: the servants
*But not too much power. We don’t want anyone to get in trouble here.
Merchants
Servants
Peasants
In reality, most of the people in the piazze were
tradespeople and the occasional servant. It
made more sense to make fun of the people that
your paying audience wants to see satirized.

21. Pantalone is without question the most
famous of the Vecchi.
Pantalone is an exceedingly old merchant.
Many plots revolve around people trying to
take Pantalone’s money, Pantalone trying
to marry a very young woman, or Pantalone
trying to marry off his daughter (or keep
his daughter from marrying for love).
His comedic business involves jokes about
his extreme old age, lack of virility, and
senility.
Historically, he represented
the love-hate relationship with
those money lending jerks like
the Medici.

22. Dottore is often Pantalone’s counterpart. Plots
often include the two of them trying to get the
upper hand over each other, or trying to
arrange or prevent a marriage between their
children.
He’s a stuffy intellectual, and likes to prattle on
about things he probably doesn’t know
anything about. He is not usually a medical
doctor, though he would probably attempt to
perform surgery if he had the opportunity. He
also likes to offer quotes in Latin, though he
likely doesn’t actually speak it.
Historically, Dottore represents all
those folks being churned out of the
universities, and the bureaucrats and
insufferable middle managers they
all eventually become.

23. Before we say a single word on these characters, it’s important to
clear up some seriously overtaught misconceptions.
The famous Zanni people talk about? Arlecchino? Truffaldino? Those
are names used by famous, long dead actors, not technically stock
characters (with one exception – we’ll get to that).
In talking about the
Zanni, it’s always
important to remember
your audience – people
shopping in the
market.
Do not mess with that lady’s
copper urn. She might cut you.

24. The First Zanni are those that have been
in the game the longest. They are clever,
occasionally crafty, and streetwise.
Characters of this sort run the gamut of
generic inn keeper to charismatic
highwayman. Often he totes around a
musical instrument, because he’s found
it to work wonders with the ladies.
His names include
Brighella, Mezzatin, and
Scapino.

25. The Second Zanni has arrived from
the sticks, and is incapable of living
anywhere but in the moment. He is a
slave to his stomach and his sleep
cycles, both of which are inconvenient.
He is often a servant to Pantalone,
and is incapable of disloyalty. He is
earnest, eager, and stupid.
Most famously, he is called Arlecchino,
though he is named Truffaldino in
many published works, including
Servant of Two Masters.
He carries the bottaccio, or slap stick.
Here’s a thing, and this is important:
He carries the stick that people use to beat him.

26. That exception mentioned
earlier? This is him.
Pulcinella is the Second Zanni
from Naples. He is played as
either stupid feigning clever or
clever feigning stupid, but at all
counts his good nature conceals
a particular fatalism that tends
toward the brutal. He is best
described as a bit of a mule –
tethered generally to the soil,
considered to be stubborn,
stupid and obstinate, but
completely capable of his own
survival.
He too carries a stick, but he
uses his to “cancel debts.”

27. First Zanni
Dubbed the
Soubrette by the
French, she is
usually the only
rational person in
the entire show.
She is shrewd,
clever, and warm
hearted, and often
serves the female
lover.
Females performed on Commedia stages nearly
from the beginning, though their names are far
more ambiguous than some of the male
characters, and are often interchangeable. It’s
more important to consider their character types
and not worry too much about what they’re
called.
Second Zanni
It has not been proven that the
Second Female Zanni was born
with her ankles behind her head,
but it hasn’t been disproven either.
She is not clever, and uses her
She’s often called Columbina, but
has also gone by Smerildina,
Arlecchina, and several others.
sexuality as a
tool, when she
has her wits
about her. She
also goes by
Smerildina and
Arlecchina.

28. In most Commedia troupes
there are two pairs of lovers:
“High Lovers,” who are older
and are the epitome of
Renaissance refinement, and
“Low Lovers,” who are young
idiots more in love with the
idea of being in love than with
the objects of their attention.
Some of Commedia’s most famous performers have been female lovers,
including Vittoria Pisimi and Isabella Andreini. It is presumed both women
were Cortegiane Oneste, and they were famous for their exquisite wit,
beauty, refinement, and their ability to improvise in a half-dozen languages.
If there is a maypole around which a Commedia plot revolves, the Lovers are
it.

29. Capitano isn’t exactly a Vecchi,
though he may stand in for one on
occasion. He’s also not a Zanni,
though he’s often ridiculous.
Capitano represents those Condottieri
we mentioned earlier – he can either
be dangerous and violent or a
pompous coward, but either way,
when he’s involved his presence is
significant.

31. It’s hard to overestimate the influence of Commedia dell’Arte on western
theatrical tradition. The English Privy Council notes payment to a company
of Italian players as early as 1550, a Commedia troupe travelled with Queen
Elizabeth I on her summer travels, and Shakespeare’s comedies openly
mimic Commedia dell’Arte tropes.
The troupe Zan Ganassa took up residence in Madrid in 1582, and Cortesi
followed soon after. The philosophical elements of the High Lovers
complemented Spanish sensibilities, providing framework for the Spanish
Golden Age.
I Gelosi was a favorite of King Henri III, and they took up residence there
for a time. Later, when Louis XIV decided to censor the commedia troupes,
they discovered that the Royal Upholsterer’s son was a somewhat mediocre
Commedia player out in Lyons. They hired him to write censorable
Commedia-style performances. His name was Moliere.
More? Here’s a big old map that I made, which follows a handful of troupes:

33. Now, Commedia lives on like some sort of crazed performance zombie. In
Europe, there is a nearly unbroken tradition of Commedia dell’Arte
performance, particularly in and around Naples.
The ensemble work and physicality inherent in the Commedia actor-troupe
inspired Jacques Copeau, Antonin Artaud, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Bertolt
Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski and others.
The term “slapstick comedy” directly refers to the bottaccio carried by the
First Zanni.
Mask work is still considered one of the most effect training tools for getting
actors to quit thinking that their audiences are telepathic.