Commedia dell'arte
Definition
Commedia dell'arte, (Italian, meaning "comedy of professional artists") was a form of improvisational theater which began in the 16th century and was popular until the 18th century, although it is still performed today. Traveling teams of players would set up an outdoor stage and provide amusement in the form of juggling, acrobatics, and, more typically, humorous plays based on a repertoire of established characters with a rough storyline, called Canovaccio.
Troupes occasionally would perform directly from the back of their traveling wagon, but this is more typical of Carro di Tespi, a sort of travelling theatre that dates back to antiquity.
The performances were improvised around a repertory of stock conventional situations, adultery, jealousy, old age, love, some of which can be traced in Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence. The dialogue and action could easily be made topical and adjusted to satirize local scandals, current events, or regional tastes, mixed with ancient jokes and punchlines. Characters were identified by costume, masks, and even props, such as the slapstick.
Thus, the commedia dell'arte, with its stock situations and characters and improvised dialogue, has shown the way to many other forms of drama, from pantomime and Punch and Judy - which features debased forms of the commedia characters (see below) - to the modern animated cartoon, situation comedy, and even professional wrestling. The characters and tropes of the Commedia have also been used in modern novels, from sword and sorcery to literary works, notably by Michael Moorcock in his Jerry Cornelius stories that culminate with the Guardian prize-winning The Condition of Muzak.
Male commedia dell'arte characters were depicted by actors wearing masks representing regions or towns. The female characters, however, were usually not masked. In fact, the roles were often played by males in women's clothing and wigs, in travesti, as it is called. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell'arte [Jul 2004]
The influence of the Commedia dell'arte
Thus, the commedia dell'arte, with its stock situations and stock characters and improvised dialogue, has shown the way to many other forms of drama, from pantomime and Punch and Judy - which features debased forms of the commedia characters (see below) - to the modern animated cartoon, situation comedy, and even professional wrestling. Richard Strauss used several of the characters in his opera Ariadne auf Naxos. The characters and tropes of the commedia have also been used in novels, notably Scaramouche, the 1921 historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, but also in more recent sword and sorcery and literary works, such as Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories that culminate with the Guardian prize-winning The Condition of Muzak.
Aspects of commedia dell'arte also passed into the silent tradition of mime. The Bohemian actor Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1796 -1846) brought the new forms of mime to Paris in the 1830s. He standardized the French image of Pierrot. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell'arte#The_influence_of_the_Commedia [Aug 2005]
see also: stock (fiction) - comedy - Italy - commedia dell'arte
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