Volume I Part 3 (1/2)

More than natural cleverness and native huin with, he had to be adisposition ”When we speak of a good comedian in the Italian style,” says Gherardi,[48] ”we inationhe says upon the spot; he is one who kno to play up to his coestures so ith theirs that he responds at a touch to their hints, and who is so ready with a repartee or movement that the audience believes the scene to have been concerted beforehand” In truth, fertility of fancy, quickness of intelligence, a brain well stocked with varied learning, facility of utterance, coe, and imperturbable presence of mind, were required in a first-rate improvisatory actor When he undertook to sustain one of the masks, he had first of all to live himself into the character If, for instance, he chose the Dottore, nothing e out of har which could rena was speaking His every gesture had to contribute to the same effect

The second nature of his part had so to supersede his own instincts, that no sudden accidents, the ue, or any of the inconveniences to which unpreuard

It was further necessary that he should stock his mind hat the actors called the _doti_ of a play, and with a repertory of what they called _generici_[49] The _doti_ or dowry of a comedy consisted of soliloquies, narratives, dissertations, and studied passages of rhetoric, which were not left to improvisation These existed in manuscript, or were composed for the occasion They had to be used at decisive points of the action, and forenerici_ or cos of emotion, humorous and fanciful diatribes, declarations of passion, love-las, reproaches, declamatory outbursts, which could be employed _ad libitum_ whenever the situation rendered them appropriate Each mask had its own stock of coe who used the on these, introducing fresh points and features, and adapting them to his own conception of the part They had to become incorporated with the ideal self he represented, and not to betray their origin in study The tradition of the draether made each member of a company knohen such premeditated pieces were to be expected They did not therefore break the general style of the performance Habit enabled the actors to lead up to them and pass away froue

Another highly important branch of the art ere called the _lazzi_ ”We give the name of _lazzi_,” says Riccoboni in his history of the theatre, ”to those sallies and bits of by-play hich Harlequin and the other ress--it ht, or by huances alien to the matter in hand--after which, however, the action has to be renewed upon its previous lines” It was precisely in these _lazzi_ that a coe; but it required great tact and sense of the dramatic situation to render them natural, appropriate, and to keep them within bound and measure

We have now seen as expected of a first-rate artist, and understand to what extent the _Co familiarity with their own repertory undoubtedly reduced the improvisatory element to a ether for years Yet they strove to gain novelty by inventing fresh situations, giving unexpected turns to dialogue, and varying their action on successive nights The best companies were those in whose hands a hackneyed comedy was always plastic, and who kept their improvisatory powers in exercise

The defect of the art was that it tended to become stereotyped The Zanni repeated their jokes The Dottore used the saain The _primo amoroso_ served up the _craenerated into un to do with the action of the piece Nature was forgotten Every actor over-played his part, ranted, raged, turned caricature into burlesque, spoke in and out of season, exaggerated his gestures, diction, gait, and declamation, until a pack of e To control these tendencies towards a false and artificial style of presentation, which for, was the duty of an able Capoco the members of the troupe to study and reflect on what they had to represent, by coeneral effect, and by raising the tone of their intelligence Thus there was the greatest difference between a well-conducted co rabble, satisfied with appealing to the lowest instincts of the proletariate The value of these re what Gozzi has to say about Antonio Sacchi's company and the causes of its dissolution

XI

There is no doubt that during their flourishi+ng period the companies of the _Commedia dell' Arte_ afforded the rarest aar, but also to refined and cultivated audiences throughout Europe

They were especially appreciated at Paris From the year 1572, when the _Confidenti_ and _Gelosi_ hteenth century, Italian troupes at the Hotel de Bourbon, the Hotel de Bourgogne, the Palais Royal, and the Opera Coht of the French court and the Parisian public Under various names, _Uniti_, _Fedeli_, _Barbieri's_, _Bianchi's_, and Cardinal Mazarin's men, actors who had learned their trade in Italy continued to seek larger profits and a wider audience in that capital ”The way in which Italian comedians compose, study, and represent their plays,” says a French critic in the year 1716,[50] ”is quite beyond the powers of language to describe I ht venture to call it inconceivable; with such a wealth of new and agreeable sallies and of unpreue do they adorn their scenes” Many anecdotes regarding these Italian players in their French homes have been transmitted to us, with detailed descriptions of their qualities I will confine myself to two extracts[51] One is taken from Constantini's Life of Tiberio Fiorelli (1608-1694), the famous Scaramouche ”He was one of the most perfect mimes who have appeared in these last centuries I call him mime advisedly, because he played his part by action

Scara what he represented intelligible by speech; he translated everything into estures to his words and his words to his gestures with inco becahtest attitude he took had nificance” Gherardi adds that ”he could keep an audience in fits of laughter for a long quarter of an hour without uttering a word A great prince, who saw him act at Rome, uttered these words, '_Scara_,' and at the end of the performance presented him with his coach and six horses” Of Tommaso Vicentini, called Il Tommasino, who made his debut at Paris as Harlequin in 1716, we read: ”His suppleness, his natural gaiety, his graceful airs of rustic simplicity, made him a first-rate Harlequin But nature had also made him an excellent actor in the inal, pathetic, ale trait, a single reflection which beca it, drew tears from the audience, and surprised the author of the piece no less than the public, and that too in spite of the mask, which seemed intended to inspire as h at his way of si melted with the tenderness of the emotion which came frohted the court of Spain during the reign of Philip II, and elcoal We find them in Bavaria, at Dresden, and in other parts of Gerland Collier, in his ”History of the English Drama,” speaks of a certain Drousiano, who played with his troupe in London during the winter of 1577-78[52] This was probably Drusiano Martelli The extempore plays of the Italians are mentioned by Whetstone, Kyd, Jonson, and Brome; and it seems probable that the plat-comedies, ascribed to the famous fools Tarleton and Wilson, were etto_ Kyd, in the _Spanish Tragedy_, shows that thean improvised play ell understood Hieronymo, ishes to have a certain subject mounted in a hurry, says to his confidant--

”The Italian tragedians were so sharp of wit, That in one hour'sin action”

Lorenzo replies--

”I have seen the like In Paris, aedians”

The full history of Italian con lands still reh in this place to prove their wide popularity

In its native country, the _Colory and the unique product of Italian draist, only expressed common opinion when he said:[53] ”I reckon i the particular distinctions of our nation I look upon it as quite a different species from the written and prenorant rabble those noble and cultivated persons who a play of this description I esteeher than those i to the purpose, excite astonish listeners”

XII

This essay would be incomplete if I failed to describe the decadence of the _Commedia dell' Arte_, and the various inconveniences which attended its performance by incompetent or wilfully scurrilous actors Without such a sequel to the history of its developetic attempts to sustain the old style by works of a peculiar and hybrid character, will not be intelligible

In its higher manifestations, this coularly delicate links of connection More than in other kinds of drama, where actors make themselves the mouthpieces of poets whose creations they incarnate, the performers of improvised co art in their own persons So long as they were conscious of their hest points within the range and scope of their achievement, they supplied a scenic travesty of actual life unequalled for its freshness and its truth to nature--sparkling with salient traits of character, seasoned with ent by its satire of conteular species of the draar instincts and dishonest proclivities It clung to the tradition of leurs, circus-clowns and rope-dancers The rare flower of racy hue of Louis XIV, sprang froh fifteen centuries of Christian teaching

The Church in council and in synod had anathematised the ancestors of Andreini and Fiorelli, Sacchi and Darbes Burial with the sanctities of religion was forbidden the the enemies of social order and civil discipline The State, in its suating them to dark corners of the city, where they lurked with thieves and prostitutes Saintly pastors of the flock, like Carlo Borroainst these corruptors of public morals[54] Even in Venice, the city of their adoption--the sea-Sodom, as Byron called it, of carnival licentiousness, the mart of pleasure for all Europe, the ed the reprobation:[55] ”Bear in mind, you actors, that you are folk beneath the ban of blessed God's alhty hatred, and that the prince allows you only as pasture for the common people, who take pleasure in your ribaldries” With such a record of contempt and disestee back into the slihted in its glory during the years when genius shed brilliant lustre on its noblest representatives, had only to look on this side or on that, and a crowd of shas of the histrionic profession, made the evidences of its inherent immorality only too apparent

I have already touched upon the scurrilities and obscenities which were coe upon the topic is not necessary

Everybody can perceive that a drareat part upon buffoonery, restrained by no obligation to literary precedents, dependent on the favour ofo at each performance with the whims and humours of masked actors, ere _ex hypothesi_ beyond the pale of social decency, h intolerable

I have already described the tendencies toward exaggerative emphasis, stilted declaanza, and wearisome repetition of exhausted motives, to which the species was peculiarly liable There is no need to expand those observations They justify the severe remarks of Goldoni in the preface to his theatrical works, which, as these have a direct bearing upon the subject of my next essay, I will summarise here:[56]--”The coenerated that it beca on public stages but indecent harlequinades, dirty and scandalous intrigue, foul jests, immodest loves Plots were badly constructed, and worse carried out in action, without order, without propriety of iven, the improvisatory conition The same fate befell the plays of Plautus and Terence, and of our elder Italian dramatists

People of culture, nay, the coainst these miserable travesties Every one earied with the insipidities and conventionalities of an art upon the wane You knehat Harlequin or Pantaloon was going to say before he opened his lips”

Readers of Gozzi's Mees serve as a prolusion, have , on the testimony of a very partial critic and avowedly Quixotical defender of the old _Commedia dell' Arte_, to what extent the system of the theatre in Italy was faulty Students of Casanova's Memoirs will remember the dark picture of the actress whom he elings exposed to indiscries of Goldoni's Me, of a coe fro these accessible sources of infor the social status of the dramatic profession in Italy untouched, I will close this chapter with sootten book--Garzoni's _Piazza Universale_ One of thecompanies was that they dressed their women up in men's clothes, and sent them about the public squares of cities to attract the rabble ”No sooner have they made their entrance,” says Garzoni, ”than the drum beats to let all the world know that the players are arrived The first lady of the troupe, decked out like athe folk to a corino[59] The populace, inquisitive by nature and eager for any new thing, hurries to take places Paying their pennies down, they crowd into a hall, where a tee has been erected, the scenes scraith charcoal as chance and want of sense will have it An orchestra of tongs and bones, like the braying of asses or the caterwauling of cats in February, perforue in the ulls The piece opens; you behold a Magnifico, who is not worth the quarter of a farthing; a Zanni, who straddles like a goose; a Gratiano, who squirts his words out from a clyster-pipe; a lover, who acts like a narcotic on the senses of his neighbours; a Spanish captain, with nothing but a couple of musty oaths in his whole repertory; a stupid and foul-mouthed bawd; a pedant, who trips up in Tuscan phrases at each turn; a Burattino, whose whole hureasy cap; a prih herher overblown charms in quite another market than the theatre The show is seasoned with loathsoht to send their perfor on this theme, Garzoni proceeds as follows: ”These profane comedians pervert the noble use of their ancient art by presenting nothing which is not openly disreputable and scandalous The filth which falls continually from their lips infects themselves and their profession with the foulest infamy They are less civil than donkeys in their action, no better than piestures, equal to public prostitutes in their immodesty of speech