Commedia Dell'Arte

With its origins in Renaissance Italy (early 16th Century) the Commedia Dell’arte was one of the earliest forms of theatre as we know it today. Starting with street performers donning masks to draw attention to themselves, these players soon teamed-up and started taking on more defined characters (or zanni) and Commedia Dell’arte was born. Using just a basic plot (the ‘scenario’) the commedia relied on the clever improvisation (also known as ‘lazzi’) of the players to pad out the performance - being of a very base or slapstick nature this normally took the form of crude jokes, bodily functions or contemporary political satire. Although the scenario changed for each play, the characters were always the same, removing the need to explain to the audience who each one was. Popular throughout the 16th and 17th Centuries, it eventually lost its satirical force and developed into other forms, such as the 18th Century Vaudeville.

There were many characters in the Commedia Dell’arte but, as in life, some were more important than others. Regardless of the plot, each character had a similar role to play each time. The characters were divided into two main camps - the masters and the servants. The three main masters were ‘Il Capitano’, ‘Pantalone’ and ‘Il Dottore’ all of which displayed various degrees of arrogance, stupidity and greed. These were served by the servants (either smart and devious, or rather stupid) always looking to get one over on their masters. ‘Arlecchino’, a devious servant, was believed to be one of the first characters created and later developed into the character of ‘Harlequin’ that we are familiar with today. Also the term 'Slapstick' came from the wooden stick he wore at his side, designed to produce maximum noise when brought into contact with other characters during mock fights, etc. Pantalone's servant was named 'Brighella' who worked to undermine his master at every turn. Other supporting characters were ‘Punchinella’ (the origin of ‘Punch’) and the lovers - two beautiful and unmasked young characters who were usually too full of themselves (and each other) to take any meaningful part in the performance but the fact that they were in love was often used as the basis of the storyline.

For young Commedia actors, learning the trade, there was the neutral mask. This was quite expressionless and covered the whole face, meaning that they could use neither facial expressions or speech to convey things to the audience, only body language and gestures.