Comedia Dell Arte

9 Pages 2163 Words

One of the most popular forms of drama from the Italian Renaissance is Commedia Dell’arte. This drama is said to be an outgrowth of the Italian farce. (Herrick, 211) This all began around the fifteenth century, but did not become popular until the end of the sixteenth and all of the seventeenth century. Commedia dell’arte means an improvised or unwritten drama.
There was never a script or set lines. However, the actors were given detailed plot outlines, also called scenarios, of what they would perform. In the outline the characters would be named, and given relationships, and the situations would be outlined as well. This information was then dived into scene, acts, prologues and epilogues. (Bellinger) With that information the actors would put everything together and began to improvise. The dialogue had to flow smoothly along with the storyline of the play. This caused the actors to be very discipline and be professional in everything that they do.
The finest of them marked their parts with uniqueness, newness and vividness, and gave value to pieces that were usually worthless. Most of the actions were improvise except for certain gestures that the character is known for doing these were called Lazzi. Lazzi usually was acrobatic feats, juggling, or wrestling. An example of this would be a servant being so disgusted with an order his master gave that he does a somersault. Commedia dealt with the subject matter of disgraceful love intrigues, clever tricks to get money, out witting a simpleton. The actors began to form groups and travel together as troupes. By traveling they were not only popular in Italy, but in most of Western Europe. Since it was the same actors traveling around they would tend to be the same character. The actors tend to play the same part and rarely played more than one character. (Smith, 4) He would be typecast as that character and play it until he retired or died. The most popular characters were the “...