The first mime, or rather the first comic actor, was he who leapt upon a bench or table to delight the assembly by his singing, his dancing or his relation of an amusing story. Improvisation prompted all such early attempts.

Some of these primitive comedians assemble in Icaria under the direction of Susarion, who gives a form and a sequence to their buffooneries, and they set out to trail their booths and chariots through the cities of Greece (800 B.C.).

They represent a slave with shaven head, a drunkard rubicund of face, brutalised by libations, an obese glutton, who tumbles incessantly. Soon comic poets, such as Magnes, Achæus and Timocreon, conceive for them performances mingled with comic dances (termed cordaces) and pantomimes.

Thespis, born in Icaria, sets up a theatre, assigns rôles to his mimes, dresses them grotesquely, parades them in chariots, their faces smeared with dregs or soot, and sets about presenting little dramas and comedies mingled with music. He detaches from the chorus an individual, assigns to him a rôle and thus creates the corypheus. Æschylus the Athenian (393 B.C.) adds a second one. Thenceforward no comic or tragic performances are given without music.

In Athens and in Sparta charlatans set up their trestles in public places, and by means of their displays attract a crowd, to whom they then proceed to sell their unguents (400 B.C.). Here we behold among others a thieving rogue, or a foreign doctor who speaks a ridiculous dialect.

Whilst Aristophanes is performing his comedies in the great theatre, the streets of Athens are encumbered by diviners, sorcerers, fortune-tellers, jugglers, equilibrists, rope dancers and prestidigitators, amongst whom are cited Theodorus and Euryclides.

In the theatre we behold equilibrist performances, such as the leap on that earliest of spring-boards, the air-inflated goatskin. From these performances were derived the rope dancers, called by the Greeks schœnobates and acrobates, and later, by the Latins, funambuli.

Among the Greek actors we find several classes, the ethologues, famous in Magna Græcia and in Alexandria, who display the lowest and most corrupt of manners; the biologues, who portray and parody the personages of their day; the cinedologues, also called simodes and lysiodes, from Susim of Magnesia and Lysis, the authors of their pieces, who perform and utter obscenities; the hilarodes, dressed in white, shod with sandals and wearing golden crowns on their heads, who act and sing to the accompaniment of string instruments; and the phallophores, a name fully justified by a part of their costume, as is to be seen in all the monuments that have survived. At Sicyonia, where the phallic choirs and the scenes called episodes are more ancient than in Athens, the actors preserve this name of phallophores.

Later this Sicyonian phallophore, his countenance blackened with soot or concealed under a papyrus mask, is transformed into a planipes in Rome and becomes in the sixteenth century the Bergamese Harlequin.

All these actors performing on the orchestra very close to the spectators found it unnecessary to increase their height by the aid of the buskin with elevated heels. They played without masks, their countenances merely smeared in various colours according to the types which they represented. Women, too, performed on the orchestra, singing, miming and moving in the pieces that did duty as interludes, much after the fashion of our modern actresses.

These female mimes passed from the Doric countries into Sicily and Magna Græcia, and finally found their way to Rome.

The Etruscans were, in the art of the theatre as in many other things, the preceptors of the Romans. Having long been in communication with the Greeks they possessed stone theatres such as that at Tusculum, long before the Romans had so much as wooden booths. In the year 442 the youth of Rome studied Oscan literature, according to Titus Livy, much as in his own time it devoted itself to the study of Greek letters.

Between Naples and Capua, Atella (to-day Aversa) was one of the first ancient cities to possess a theatre, and above all a particular style of comedy; thus she gave the name of Atellanæ to the first comedies performed in Rome, comedies which derived largely from the satirical and buffoon pieces of the Greeks.

These comedies, interlarded with dancing, singing and pantomime, in which the actors improvised upon a scenario, or agreed subject, were full of pleasantries and quips, and they very quickly eclipsed the Saturæ, the indigenous and national comedies of Rome.

The Roman youth appropriated this style of piece and the right to perform it. The actors of the Atellanæ alone enjoyed exemptions and liberties without limit. Later these pieces became licentious and obscene, and the name of Atellanæ was given to all those which were written in a ribald style. They were also called exodiæ from the custom of playing them after other pieces or at the end of the spectacle. They were performed on the orchestra under the proscenium, hence the name of comædiæ planipediæ, because the actors dispensed with buskins. They dispensed also with those enormous masks termed personæ.

The tabernariæ comedies, the subjects for which were drawn from the lower orders and from tavern life, were sometimes played in the same manner as the planipediæ; this was also the case with the togatæ, in which the actors appeared arrayed in the toga.

The other styles of comedy were designated variously as follows:—mixed comedies, partly developed in speech, partly in mimetic action, such as The Eunuch of Terence; Motoriæ comedies, in which all was action, such as The Amphitryon of Plautus; Palliatæ comedies, in which the subject, the characters and the costumes were Greek; Prætextatæ comedies, in which the subject and the characters were drawn from the nobility; Latinæ or comic-lachrymose comedies invented by Rhinthonus, a buffoon of Tarentum; Statariæ comedies, which contained a great deal of dialogue and little pantomime, such as the Asinaria of Plautus and the Hecyra of Terence.

In the performance of some pieces theatrical declamation was shared between two actors, one of whom spoke whilst the other gesticulated. The Abbé du Bos in his critical reflections upon poetry and painting offers the following explanation of this, based upon the writings of Titus Livy:—

“Of all the Roman spectacles,” says M. Charles Magnin, “none was more appreciated than pantomime; it became even peculiar to this people to whom the masterpieces of the Greek tragedies were foreign.” They required shows, but shows contrived for the eyes. This term pantomime, signifying imitator of all things, suggests that these actors had the art of rendering all manner of subjects by gesture alone. Lucian says that sometimes the subject of the piece performed by the pantomime was sung, and that at other times he performed, in silence, expressing the verses by his mute action.

And further on he says:

Already, before the Christian era, the funambuli or rope dancers were a source of sensation in Rome. The Romans preferred their spectacles to all others. Terence himself experienced this; and he laments that during the performance of one of his pieces the appearance of a new funambulus so attracted the notice of the spectators that they could give no thought or attention to anyone else. Ita populus, studio spectaculi cupidus in funambulo animam occupaverat.

The celebrated perfection of the ancient mimes amazes us when we consider the masks they wore, which must have deprived them of all power of expression and even of the natural character of their countenances, unless this superimposed face was contrived with such art and scenic experience as to render it effective at a given distance. These masks, however, were less deformed than those of other actors, since at least they were not equipped with those enormous mouths whose aim was to increase the volume of the voice—a measure necessary in the vast theatres of antiquity.

It may be well to enter into some details of the uses of the ancient mask, with which the mask worn by the actors of the Italian comedy is undoubtedly connected.

We know already that the chief advantage of those ancient scenic masks was to enable men to appear in female rôles. This mask was a kind of great helmet covering the entire head of the actor and representing, in addition to the features of the countenance, the hair, the ears and even the ornaments which women might employ in their headdresses.

This mask was called persona; it is thus that Phædrus, Horace and other authors have named it in their works. It appears that the earliest were contrived of bark; later they were made of leather, lined with cloth; but as their shapes were liable to distortion it became the custom to make them all of a light wood, and it was conceived, moreover, that they should be constructed in a manner calculated to increase the volume of the actor’s voice; this was accomplished either by lining them with plates of bronze or other sonorous material, or else by fitting to the interior of the mouth a sort of trumpet which was to have the effect of a megaphone. Hence is it that a large number of these masks have mouths of a size and an extent that render them hideous at close quarters; but it should be considered that this deformity was no doubt diminished when they were seen from a distance, the spectator then being able to perceive no more than a very strongly marked expression.

Aulus-Gellius, who wrote under the Emperor Adrian, gives us the following account of the effect of these masks in increasing the voice:—

It was natural to provide different sorts of masks according to the employment for which they were destined. Consequently they were divided into comic, tragic and satiric masks. These last in particular were horribly overcast, and no doubt very much larger than the others, because, being intended to represent fauns, satyrs or cyclops, which poetical imagination depicted as superhuman beings, the actors entrusted with these rôles had to appear as men very much above the natural. Consequently they never failed to increase their stature in proportion to the size of their masks.

Only the masks designed for feminine rôles or those worn by dancers were, far from being deformed, of pleasing and regular features. They were called, according to Lucian, mute or orchestric masks.

We also know that among the Greeks, where the aim of comedy, more free than amongst the Romans, was to depict living citizens, the actors wore masks displaying the features of those persons whom they portrayed. It is thus that Aristophanes in his comedy of the Clouds gave one of his actors a mask which so perfectly resembled Socrates that the spectators thought to behold the man himself upon the stage. The Romans corrected this abuse, and it seems that in the comedies of Terence the masks of the actors expressed the age, the condition, the manners and the nature of the character, but without ever offering to the spectators any features with which they were acquainted.

The name of histrion, which is derived from the Etruscan hister, came from Etruria to Rome together with scenic performances; it became the designation of all actors. These were for the most part slaves or freedmen who did not enjoy the privilege of Roman citizenship. Moreover, any citizen who should have been so ill advised as to appear upon the stage to perform or declaim would thereby have forfeited his civic rights. For the rest, only the law was rigorous with histrions; custom dealt with them tolerantly. We know that an actor could become rich, and free if he were a slave, when by his genius and his talents he attained celebrity.

Quintus Roscius, a famous Roman actor, born 129 B.C., earned from five to six hundred thousand sesterces, and the actor Esopus, his contemporary, left to his son, on his death-bed, a fortune of twenty million sesterces[1] acquired entirely in the theatre.

Sorix and Metrobius were his contemporaries, and shared with him the friendship and favour of Sylla.

The city of Tarentum, in Magna Græcia, was famous for its actors, who came to Rome after the conquest of their city. Cleon performed his mimetics to the sound of the flute; he was the most celebrated actor in all Italy and played without mask, like Nymphodorus, his rival. Istomachus, who, at first a charlatan, followed later in the ways of Cleon, began by performing his farces in the public squares; afterwards, when he had acquired a certain celebrity, he set up a theatre for his shows.

Esopus, according to Quintilian, was considered one of the greatest tragedians of Rome, whilst Roscius excelled as a comic actor; he was the friend of Cicero, and as esteemed for his talents as for his probity. He had brought that art of gesture which the Latins called saltatio to such a point of perfection that Cicero often challenged him as to which of them would render the same thought with the greater eloquence, the one by gesture, or the other by word.

Pylades and Bathyllus, in the first century, were both famous as pantomime actors, and the former assembled a troupe which enjoyed a wide celebrity. Lentulus, mime and mimographer, lived also in the first century under Domitian and Trajan.

In the third century, Genes or Genest of Rome, a comedian, was martyred.

In addition to the actors subsidised by the State there were itinerant mountebanks, mimes and buffoons—the etymology of which, buffo, is derived from the action of inflating the cheeks so that the smacks which the actor is to receive must make more noise, and induce to greater laughter. All these mountebanks overran Italy, and performed their pieces, which were in the nature of Atellanæ, and written—like those intended for the great theatres—in verse, which was often sung to accompaniments on the flute.

The Romans, like the Greeks, had also their nevrospastes or marionette performers, for we see the actors of the Atellanæ borrowing religious pomps, such as the Manducus, from the ancient marionettes. “Thus was established in Rome,” says M. Charles Magnin, “a sort of interchange between the characters of the Atellanæ and those of the theatre of marionettes, just as much more recently in France the masks of the Italian comedy mingled, and, as it were, duplicated themselves with the actors of the troop of Polichinelle; so that it is not easy to know whether in certain rôles marionettes preceded living actors or living actors preceded marionettes.” The marionettes, or αύτοματα, as Aristotle calls them, were brought from Egypt into Greece.

It is necessary to sketch the history of this theatre, for it is essential to that of certain types of the Italian comedy.

Herodotus relates that the origin of puppets on wires is of the greatest antiquity; but he claims to have seen the women of Egypt bearing in procession, in the religious festivals of Osiris, whom he calls Bacchus, images which sometimes were veritable statues, certain parts of whose bodies were moved by cords. The Greeks appropriated this mechanism, but they did not confine the uses of it to religious ceremonies; they employed these automata in the theatre.

Similarly in the religious ceremony, which in Rome preceded the games in the circus and the triumphs, wooden statues were carried which were equipped with hidden strings. Amongst them were the African ghouls, known as Lamiæ, and the sharp-toothed Manducus, the eater of children, a monster with a human head (undoubtedly the primitive type of Mâchecroûte and Croquemitaine), which opened, says Rabelais, in Pantagruel, “large and horrific mandibles, armed with teeth, above and below, which by means of the device of the little hidden cord, were made terrifically to clash the one against the other.”

The identical custom of promenading monsters and colossal figures is to be found again in the Middle Ages, with the difference, however, that instead of being paraded in the triumphs of emperors they are now seen in the anniversaries of the holy bishops, canonised for delivering the country of awesome monsters, or just simply for having curbed idolatry; even in the processions of our own day we may behold monsters, whose jaws are armed with horrible teeth, or a giant Goliath and a Saint Christopher moving arms and legs.

This name of marionnette is derived from Maria, Mariola, a diminutive which the young girls in the Middle Ages gave to the little figures of the Virgin exhibited in churches and by the wayside. Our fathers have drawn therefrom various derivatives, marote, mariotte, mariole, mariette, marion, and lastly marionnette. All these infantile names, given at first to young girls, were appropriated afterwards by mountebanks for their wooden puppets, which they called marmozets and mariottes, as they are still called in Languedoc.

In 1550, in Italy, they were called bagatelli and magatelli; but when Burattino, one of the masks of the Italian comedy, came to be personified among the marionettes, he bestowed his name upon them, and they came generally to be known as burattini, from the end of the sixteenth century onwards.

The names of burattini and fantoccini are given to those whose limbs are articulated and moved by wires, whilst bamboccie applies to those that are worked by a string stretched horizontally from a stick on the one side, to the performer’s knee on the other; these are still in use among the little savoyards who “make la Catarina dance.” Puppi and pupazzi describe those whose hands and heads only are of wood. The body is merely a cloth pocket, into which the hand is introduced; the thumb and the middle finger work the arms, the index moves the head, being thrust into the hollow neck. These marionettes, simple in their structure, go a long way back. It was by means of them—easy of transport and maintenance as they are, and as is also their theatre, a mere booth of a primitive simplicity revealing no more than the upper half of their bodies—that the traditions of farce and satire were preserved throughout the Middle Ages.

In Spain the marionettes bear the name of titeres but they are more commonly called bonifrates because in their masque performances they always represent hermits and saintly characters. “The crowd,” says M. Charles Magnin, “has ever shown itself greedy of scenic amusements, and when it has not been possible to obtain comedians, the people themselves have been their own comedians and buffoons. Well might the Church condescend to the mimetic inclinations of the multitude and strongly endeavour to satisfy the bizarre fancies of the crowd by serious, and sometimes comic, representations; well might she give to the laity a rôle in the sacred ceremonies. But there remained ever outside the Church a surplus of unsatisfied mimetic passion which demanded, notwithstanding all inhibitions, the maintenance of comedians and dancers in the public places.”

In the fourth and fifth centuries the little familiar dramas, similar in manner to the later Italian subjects, were greatly in vogue in the Greek and Roman theatres. Women took part in them. As for the subjects of the pieces, they were always, say the Fathers of the Church, intrigues of gallantry and the misadventures of guardians or betrayed husbands. “Philosophers and doctors are always ridiculed in them. We behold more or less the same subjects and the same characters as those which passed later into the Italian comedy.”

Cassiodorus, writing in 560, says that the performances of mimes and pantomimes are still flourishing in his day.

The Fathers of the Church sought to extinguish the last traces of paganism by forbidding comedies and all histrionic performances, upon the ground that they were impious and sacrilegious. But the taste and the passion for the theatre being inherent in the Italian, the new religion could not succeed in abolishing this art. The Church Victorious—leaving out of consideration the spirit of the early Christians, which contented itself with the Catacombs of Saint Agnes for only temple—felt the need of monuments and luxurious churches and of pomps calculated to strike the imagination. Thus we can see certain dramas and religious representations intermingling with the mise-en-scène of Catholicism Triumphant. It is in the very Church itself that dramatic art finds refuge. The theatres had ceased to be places of pleasure and entertainment. The majority had been converted into citadels and fortresses to resist the constant invasions of the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths, the Lombards and the Normans.

Although the people of Italy had no leisure in which to occupy themselves with farces and show-plays when the avalanche of the Northern people descended upon their cities and overran the countryside now desolated by famine, no sooner was a moment of respite conceded to this poor land than the taste for comedy and spectacles was born again of its own ashes.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, who lived in 1224, speaks of the comedy of his day as of a spectacle which had existed for many centuries before him. He calls comedy histrionatus ars and comedians histriones.

When the feudal and barbarous nobility was compelled, under a pious pretext, to bear arms in the East to stem the incessant wave of Saracen invasion which threatened Christendom, the whole of Europe traversed the civilisation of the empire of the East, and it was upon their return from the Crusades that the pilgrims, their imagination fired by the marvels of Byzantium, performed the remarkable adventures of the knights-errant, miracles of saints and religious legends, first in Italy, and later in France. These were the sources of our theatre. In Italy the histrionic art began to assume two distinct manners: the sacred and religious mystery plays, and the comedies, which continued to be what they had been in the hands of the ancient Latin mimes—that is to say, burlesque farces, improvisations mingled with tumbling, dances and scraps of ancient pieces which the Italian dancers have preserved, often unconsciously, down to our own days.

With the fourteenth century Italy enters upon a new era, upon the epoch of reflorescence, the renaissance of arts and letters which was not experienced in France until a century later; nevertheless, in the beginning of the fourteenth century Italian influence inspired Luco, the Provençal poet, to compose a satirical piece against the Duke of Anjou, King of Naples. Towards the middle of the same century, Parasolz, another Provençal poet, composed a series of five pieces, or rather a piece in five chapters, against Jeanne I., Queen of Naples; therein her life, her adventures, her crimes, were dragged into the light of day under the titles of L’Andreasse, La Tarenta, La Mahorquina, L’Allemande, La Johanella. This satire was performed at Avignon, before the anti-pope Clement VII. (Robert of Geneva), who was so pleased with the work that he appointed Parasolz Canon of Sisteron.

The Italian language, having been purified by Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, the fifteenth century was in Italy an epoch of taste, of art and of letters. Whilst in France the theatre was the monopoly of the religious confraternities, jealous of their privileges, in Italy it was always open to the productions of wit and of genius. Two distinct styles existed there: the noble tragedies and comedies written, memorised and recited, such as Il Pastor Fido of Guarini, La Calandra of the Cardinal of Bibbiena, La Mandragora of Macchiavelli, I Simili of Giorgio Trissino, L’Aminta of Tasso, etc., etc.; and the free theatre of the improvisers given over to singing, dancing, raillery and facetiousness. Whilst in France one might take delight only in mystery plays, into which had been introduced, it is true, many profane and gross pleasantries, or in the plumed mountebanks, who swallowed swords and canes, walked on their hands or with blindfolded eyes, to the sound of tambourines, and performed what is still known to-day as la danse des œufs, in Italy the theatre was rediscovered, honoured and cultivated.

Whilst the Zingari, Bohemians or Gypsies, that errant race of Hindu soudras, overran Europe, and sometimes took the risk of displaying their pupazzi or magatelli—which caused them in certain countries to be taken for sorcerers and got them condemned by sentence to be hanged and burnt—troupes of comedians and of buffoons, such as Martino d’Amelia and Gian Manente, went about Italy performing plays written by Poliziano, Macchiavelli, Ariosto, the Cardinal of Bibbiena, Nicolò Secchi, Tasso, Fedini, Guarini, and others, dramas, tragedies and pieces in which tragedy, comedy and satire were mingled, called tragisatirocomedie, improvisations upon given subjects, termed commedie dell’ arte, and lastly, commedie sostenute.

In speaking of the Italian comedies Montaigne says: “I have often conceived a fancy to write comedies such as those of the Italians who are so felicitous in that art. They find in everything something to excite their laughter; they are in no need to tickle themselves.”

Throughout the sixteenth century, down to the seventeenth, two distinct theatres were therefore in existence: one occupied by comedians who played impromptu (commedia dell’ arte) with Harlequin and other masked actors; the other occupied by the academicians, or academic actors, who performed written and regular pieces (the commedia sostenuta) which sometimes passed into the theatre of the buffo-comedians.

It was Angelo Beolco, surnamed Ruzzante, who was the first to open a career to the Italian dialects. In 1528 he presented his first prose comedy, in which each character spoke a different dialect. This entertainment became extremely popular. Every locality desired to have its own type represented in it. Hence its infinity of characters and of names, which may be summed up into a few principal types: Harlequin, Pulcinella, the Captain, Scaramouche, Brighella, Pantaloon and the Doctor.

Pulcinella had never ceased to exist from the days of the Atellanæ, in which he went by the name of Maccus, the mimus albus.

Casnar, Pappus, the flouted and ridiculous old man, became Pantaloon, and later Cassandro.

The two Zanni, Harlequin and Brighella, are the sanniones of the ancient theatre; the first is a lackey or loutish peasant, stupid and gluttonous; the second is an astute and wily slave, avenging himself upon his masters by robbing them.

The ancient tradition has been preserved down to our own days in the garments of the characters of the Italian comedy. First the mask, which has been but little modified; for the principal types, such as Pulcinella, Harlequin, Brighella, Pantaloon, Coviello, Tartaglia, still wear the mask which, in itself, lends them an ancient character and, except in the case of old men, a nightcap which conceals the hair and so perpetuates the tradition of the shaven heads of the ancient mimes.

The tradition of that other part of the costume worn by the Greek phallophores was preserved by comedy mimes and buffoons down to the time of Louis XIII. It suffices to cast a glance at such illustrations as Callot’s Les Petits Danseurs, as Cerimonia, Smaraolo, Scaramuccia, Captain Spezza-Monti and others, to realise this.

Most of the characters also wore the mantle (il tabaro), and all the lackeys, like the slaves of the Atellanæ, appeared in short garments. The toga and the long robes were permitted only to the nobles and the old men.

The club of Pulcinella and the bat of Harlequin are probably no more than modifications of the curved staff of the peasants of the Greek theatre, the attribute of the Muse of Comedy.

Other essential analogies are to be considered. First, La Cantatrice included in all Italian troupes, who, in the manner of the ancient chorus, came to sing and to explain the scenes. Then the modern planipes, the Bolognese Narcisino, who still comes, by way of interlude, to chat with the public and scoff at the manners of the day; finally and chiefly the method of performing impromptu, the actors having memorised no rôles and playing after merely having read an outline of the subject nailed up in the wings. These resemblances and many others would prove that the Commedia dell’ Arte is no more than the continuation of the theatre of Atella with its improvisations and its free and often licentious scenes, mingled with songs and pantomime.

We have said that every province desired to be represented. Thus Bergamo provided Harlequin and Brighella; Milan supplied Beltrame and Scapino, who are merely varieties of Brighella and Meneghino; Venice contributed Pantaloon and his lackey Zacometo; Naples gave us Pulcinella, Scaramouche, Tartaglia, el Capitan (who became metamorphosed under his Spanish designation) and the Biscegliese. From Rome came Meo-Patacca, Marco-Pepe and Cassandrino, this last a more modern type, a sort of monsignore; Florence supplied Stenterello; Bologna, the Doctor and Narcisino; Turin, Gianduja; Calabria, Coviello and Giangurgolo; Sicily, the Baron, Peppe-Nappa, etc., etc.

Harlequin, Brighella, the Doctor and Pantaloon may be called the four fundamental modern masks.

Salvator Rosa indicated seven—namely, these four, and Pulcinella, Tartaglia and Coviello.

Why are these set apart to-day? Perhaps they are so old that they have fallen into disfavour. Where are the Menego, the Truffa, the Zaccagnino, Cavicchio, Bagatino, Ciurlo Guazeto and many others? But then—

When Flaminio Scala travelled through Italy with his troupe, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, a few years after Beolco (Ruzzante), he found the personages of the Commedia already established, and the greater part of them baptized. Nothing remained for him but to bring them into action. Since the advent of the Christian era women had disappeared from the theatre; with the Renaissance they re-entered it again.

Flaminio Scala’s company played in Italy from the second half of the sixteenth down to the beginning of the seventeenth century; chiefly they performed commedie dell’ arte upon subjects very succinctly sketched. Scala did no more than continue the performances of fables and farces which had been played long before his day. He has left us some fifty subjects, printed in 1611. Among the personages in these are Arlecchino, Pedrolino (Pierrot), Burattino, Fritellino, Capitan Spavento, Mezzetino, Pantalone, il Dottore, Cavicchio, and Flaminio Scala himself under the name of Flavio. Thus in the middle of the sixteenth century we find a considerable number of our Italian masks named and performing.

Evaristo Gherardi, on the subject of performances upon scenarii and the improvisation of the actors in the Commedia dell’ Arte, writes as follows:—

Further, on this same subject, here are the sentiments of Riccoboni:

The opinion of the witty and very artistic Président de Brosses (1740) may be added to the foregoing.

Enough has been said to show that the Italian comedy is directly descended from the performances of the ancient Latin mimes; and the genre called commedia dell’ arte in particular is none other than that of the Atellanæ. It is the only theatre in Europe which has preserved the traditions of antiquity. The theatre in France did not begin to take form until the Italian influence came to soften and to abolish the rudeness of the marvellous and grotesque French mystery plays.

It is often wondered how it could have been possible to play such scenes as that in which two actors, finding themselves on the stage, seek each other and speak without seeing each other; or sometimes five or six characters perform at the same time, forming nevertheless two or three groups, who again do not see one another. These scenes, which are constantly to be found in the plays of Plautus and Ruzzante, are to be explained by the shape and construction of the theatres of antiquity and of the Renaissance, of which a very beautiful specimen, the work of Palladio, is still to be seen at Vicenza.

The auditorium is constructed in the shape of a semicircle supplied with steps. It is surrounded by a colonnade, the intervals between the pillars forming the boxes, and by stairs leading to a gallery which crowns the whole. The stage consists of two parts, the proscenium, a semicircular platform which reaches to the foot of the steps, and behind this the stage proper, bearing the scenery. But the scenery was hung very differently from that in our modern theatres. The stage was divided into three arcades, and under each arcade one saw, upon a sloping ground, a real street with wooden houses; these streets, proceeding from the back of the stage, come to debouch upon the proscenium, which is deemed an open square. The actors may therefore perform and circulate through all the streets, conceal themselves, spy upon one another, listen, or very naturally surprise secrets and mysteries in such a manner as is often impossible in our modern theatres. A further great advantage was that the actors performing, whether on the proscenium or the stage, might be equally well heard in any part of the auditorium owing to its circular construction and to the fact that the stage was not raised as is the case with us. This theatre, called the Olympic, built by Palladio at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is an architectural gem.

On the occasion of the fêtes with which the city of Lyons received Henry II. and Catherine de Medicis in 1548, the Florentine merchants established in that city brought at their own expense a troupe of Italian comedians to perform the Cardinal of Bibbiena’s La Calandra before the King and Queen of France. But the Italian comedy theatre was not seen in Paris until 1570, when it was established there by one Ganasse or Juan Ganassa. Here both tragedy and comedy were performed, and “The charge of admission was up to five or six sous for each person.” Ganassa’s troupe, authorised by letters patent from the king, does not appear to have made a long sojourn in France. Ganassa had been in Spain in the early years of the reign of Philip II. managing a company of Italian comedians, who performed farces in the Italian language. In this company were included Harlequin, Pantaloon, the Doctor, Pagliaccio, Burattino, and Tabarino whose homonym enjoyed later on so great a vogue in the Place Dauphine in Paris. The performances of these personages and their costumes achieved a great success in Spain, where they made a protracted sojourn before going to France.

Porbus shows in one of his pictures a ball or divertissement at the Court of Charles IX. in 1572. In this the king and all his courtiers are to be seen in the costumes of various Italian buffoons. The Duke of Guise (le Balafré) appears as Scaramouche, the Duke of Anjou (Henry III.) as Harlequin, the Cardinal of Lorraine as Pantaloon, Catherine of Medicis as Columbine, and His Very Christian Majesty is seen cutting capers under the mask of Brighella. Singular prelude to the horrible tragedy of the 24th August of the same year!

In 1571 the Italian troupe, known under the name of I Comici Confidenti—that is to say, the confident comedians (confident, it was understood, of the indulgence of the public)—journeyed through the provinces of France. The performances of this company consisted in impromptu comedies, pastorals and written comedies and tragedies.

The famous Celia, whose real name was Maria Malloni, was one of the members of this troupe, as was also Bernardino Lombardi, actor and poet, and Fabrizio di Fornaris, known by the name of Captain Crocodile—Capitan Cocodrillo.

At about the same time a second troupe, under the name of I Comici Gelosi (that is to say, zealous, anxious to please the public), came also to France to perform the same style of pieces. This troupe also included some excellent actors, such as Orazio Nobili, of Padua, Adriani Valerini, of Verona, known under the name of Aurelio, and the beautiful Lidia, of Bagnacavallo.

In 1574 the two rival companies amalgamated into a single troupe, which took the name of I Comici Uniti (the united comedians); but the Masters of la Passion caused the theatre to be closed.

At the end of 1576 the two united troupes separated once more, and again resumed their respective titles of I Confidenti and I Gelosi. It was then that Flaminio Scala placed himself at the head of the Gelosi, and travelled through France and Italy alternately, always encouraged by the greatest success. This troupe was in Venice when Henry III. summoned it to Blois, whence he commanded it to Paris. The arrival of these artists, in 1577, is announced by L’Etoile in the following terms:—