V.

At this point it is necessary to inquire into the relation between the modern Italian _Commedia dell' Arte_ and the old Italian comedy of mimes and _exodia_. Much has been written, with meagre and dubious results, about the origins of the Latin drama. One thing, however, appears certain, after shaking the dust from ponderous tomes of erudition. The Romans, like the modern Italians, had their _Commedia Erudita_ and _Commedia dell' Arte_. Of the two species, in cla.s.sical times as afterwards, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ was indigenous and popular, the _Commedia Erudita_ derived and literary. The latter, whether it affected Greek manners, as in the so-called _Fabula palliata_, or Roman manners, as in the so-called _Fabula togata_, remained in the hands of scholarly authors and serious actors (_histriones_). The former had its natural origin in popular habits, and only at a comparatively late period submitted to regular artistic treatment. It was represented by masked buffoons, _Sanniones_, _Planipedes_, _Stupidi_, and so forth. We hear of _Osci ludi_ and _Fescennini versus_, the former pointing to Campania and the vintage, the latter to Etruria and village sports.[28] The _Satura_, which seems to have been an offshoot from the _Fescennina_, corresponded pretty closely to what we now call farce, and eventually developed into the _exodia_ or _hors d'uvre_ of the later Roman theatre.[29] Out of these indigenous elements, but with special relation to the _Osci ludi_, grew a literary form of comedy which obtained the name of _Atellana_. It is supposed to have originated in the Oscan city of Atella, close to Acerra, Pulcinella's birthplace. In all these native forms of drama, dialects were spoken and masks were used; and this is a main point of connection between them and the modern Italian _Commedia dell' Arte_.

Another feature in common is the rank realism and open obscenity which marked the humours of both species.

Among the ancient Roman masks four types are known to us by name--_Maccus_, a Protean fool or Harlequin; _Bucco_, a garrulous clown or blockhead; _Pappus_, a miserly, amorous, befooled old man; _Dossenus_, a moralising charlatan. We also hear of the _Stupidus_ and _Morio, Manducus_, a notable glutton, and the _Sanniones_, so called possibly from their grin.

Further familiarity with the modern _Commedia dell' Arte_ will make it clear how tempting it is to conjecture a direct transmission of these Roman masks from ancient to modern times. Maccus and Bucco bear a strong resemblance to the two Zanni. The very word Zanni seems to suggest Sanniones; although it is probably derived from the Bergamasque name for a varlet--Jack; Zanni being a contraction of Giovanni. Pappus looks uncommonly like Pantalone, and Dossenus like the Dottore. The _Stupidus_ has an air of our clown or Mezzettino or Il Villano. Manducus might be any glutton with a huge pair of champing jaws. Yet nothing could be more uncritical than to a.s.sume that the Italian masks of the sixteenth century A.D. boasted an uninterrupted descent from the Roman masks of the fifth century B.C. That a.s.sumption closes our eyes to a far more interesting aspect of the phenomenon. The fact seems to be that ancient and modern Italy possessed the same mimetic faculty and used it in the same fashion. The peasants of modern Tuscany indulged in their Fescennine jibes, stained themselves with wine-lees, and jumped through bonfires, like their most remote ancestors.[30] The grape-gatherers of modern Nola and Capua ridiculed their neighbours with obscene jests, and pranked themselves in travesty, like the earliest Oscans or the first colonists from h.e.l.las.[31] Out of the same persistent habits emerged the same kind of native drama; and just as the Atellanae of ancient Rome eventually brought the comedy of the proletariate upon the public stage in cities, so at the close of the sixteenth century the _Commedia dell'

Arte_ worked up the rudiments of popular farce and satire into a new form which delighted Europe for two hundred years.

Many details derived from the _Commedia Erudita_ rendered the resemblance between the modern improvised drama and the vernacular comedy of ancient Rome superficially striking. The conventional characters of Plautus and Terence, the _senex_, the _servus_, the _meretrix_, the _mango_, the _ancilla_, the _miles gloriosus_, and the _parasitus_ reappeared. In truth, this peculiar and highly complex hybrid combined strains of manifold varieties. Upon the wild and native briar, which in former times produced the _Osci ludi_, _Fescennini versus_, and _Satura_, and which went on living its own natural life beneath the drums and tramplings of so many conquests, was now grafted the cultivated rose of the _Commedia Erudita_. This, in its turn, contained elements of the _Fabula palliata and togata_. The result was a species eminently characteristic of sixteenth-century Italy, and similar to the Atellan farces of the Romans.

VI.

The _Commedia dell' Arte_ yields, upon a.n.a.lysis, three chief component factors. The four leading masks, Arlecchino and Brigh.e.l.la, Pantalone and Il Dottore, came respectively from Bergamo, Venice, and Bologna. These were the contribution of Northern Italy. Pulcinella, Tartaglia, Coviello, and the Captain came from Naples. They were subsidiary characters of great importance, contributed by the South. The lovers, _primo amoroso_ and _prima amorosa_, upon whose adventures the intrigue turned, and the _Servetta_, came from Tuscany, or rather from the tradition of written comedy, which adhered to the literary Italian tongue. If priority in time is to be sought for any of these factors, we must look to Lombardy. The four masks which were indispensable to this dramatic species, and which survived all its vicissitudes, had an undoubted Lombardo-Venetian origin. The Neapolitan masks were superadded, and the Tuscan intrigue formed little more than a conventional framework for the humours of the fixed characters. Scarcity of doc.u.ments makes it impossible to speak with absolute authority on any of these points; yet we have good reason to credit the tradition which connects the origin of the _Commedia dell' Arte_ with Northern Italy.

A carnival song, composed by Anton-Francesco Grazzini, called Il Lasca, at Florence some time before the year 1559, throws light upon the subject.[32] It is ent.i.tled "Canto di Zanni e Magnifichi." The Magnifico corresponded to Pantalone; and I need not repeat that the Zanni were best known as Arlecchino and Brigh.e.l.la. Lasca makes it clear in this poem that the Lombard masks were strangers to Tuscany, and that they performed comedies upon a public stage:[33]

"_Facendo il Bergamasco e il Veneziano,_ _N'andiamo in ogni parte,_ _E'l recitar commedie e la nostra arte._"

He also shows how the buffoon parts in these plays were interwoven with the intrigue of the regular drama:

"E Zanni tutti siamo, Recitatori eccellenti e perfetti; Gli altri strioni eletti, Amanti, Donne, Romiti e Soldati, Alla stanza per guardia son restati."

Furthermore, he lets us know that acting was combined with dancing and mountebank performances, and drops the information that women in Florence were not allowed to attend the theatres where Zanni played:

"Commedie nuove abbiam composte in guisa Che quando recitar le sentirete, Morrete delle risa, Tanto son belle, giocose, e facete; E dopo ancor vedrete Una danza ballar sopra la scena, Di varj e nuovi giuochi tutta piena."

It is therefore obvious that, at the middle of the sixteenth century, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ had already taken shape and earned popularity.

The companies who introduced it into Tuscany were recognised as hailing from Bergamo and Venice. Before another fifty years had pa.s.sed away, this species absorbed the attention of Italy, adopted elements from every district, and settled down into a definite form of comedy, which lasted until the period of Goldoni's reform of the stage. It culminated about the middle of the seventeenth century, and maintained a high degree of excellence during the first half of the eighteenth. But when Goldoni attacked it, and Gozzi rose in its defence, the type was already on the wane. Depending, as any kind of improvised drama must necessarily do, upon the personal talents of successive actors, the _Commedia dell'

Arte_ died of inanition when theatrical genius was diverted into other channels.[34] Originality of humour then yielded to conventional buffoonery. The masks became more and more stereotyped, more and more insipid. Were it not for Gozzi's _Fiabe_, we should hardly be able to form a conception of the part they actually played for two centuries in Europe.

VII.

Let us watch the carnival procession of the masks defile before us. We may imagine that they are crossing the stage of a theatre, while we sit idle in our stalls. First comes Pantalone, the worthy Venetian merchant, good-hearted, shrewd, and canny, yet preserving a certain child-like simplicity, which long acquaintance with the world has not contaminated. His full t.i.tle is Pantalone de'Bisognosi. Sometimes he is called Il Magnifico, sometimes Babilonio; and old tradition gives a singular derivation for his name of Pantalone. Instead of having anything to do with the Saint called Pantaleone, he ought really to be known as Piantaleone, or Plant-the-lion. In fact, he is one of those patriotic _cittadini_ who, partly out of zeal for S. Mark and partly with a view to commerce, were reputed to hoist flags with the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock and barren headland of Levantine waters.[35] Pantalone wears a black mantle, woollen cap, short trousers, socks and slippers of bright red. A black domino conceals half of his face. He is sometimes a bachelor, but more frequently a widower with one daughter, who engrosses all his time and care. Easy-going indulgence for the foibles of his neighbours, combined with homely mother-wit, is the fundamental note of his character. But as time goes on, he degenerates, dotes, yields to senile vices. At last he becomes the shuffling slippered Pantaloon of our Christmas pantomimes.[36]

After Pantaloon walks the Doctor in his Bologna gown; a hideous black mask covers his whole face, smudged with red patches, like skin-disease or wine-stains, on the cheeks. He is Graziano, Baloardo Graziano, or Prudentio, and has a kind of b.a.s.t.a.r.d brother called the Dottor Balanzon Lombardo. Boasting his D.C.L. or M.D. or LL.D. degree from the august University, Graziano makes a vast parade of learning. _Bononia docet_ is always on his lips or in his thoughts; yet he cannot open his mouth without letting fall some palpable absurdity. Law jargon, quibbles, quiddities, preposterous syllogisms, fragments of distorted Latin, misapplied quotations from the Pandects, mingle with metaphysics, astrology, and physical chimaeras about the spheres and elements and humours, in his talk. He is a walking caricature of learning, and the low stupid cunning of his nature contrasts with the vain pomp he makes of erudition. To sustain this mask with spirit taxed the genius of a comedian. He had to keep a voluminous repertory of pedantic lumber always ready, to blunder with wit and pun in paradoxes, seasoning the whole with broad Bolognese dialect and plebeian phrases.

Pantalone and the Doctor were only half-masks; that is to say, they held something in common with the stationary characters of written comedy, and took a decided part in the action of the play. As the _Commedia dell' Arte_ coalesced with the _Commedia Erudita_, they approached more and more nearly to the type of the _senes_ in Latin comedy. The present generation has seen them both in Rossini's _Barbiere di Siviglia_.

Next come the two Zanni. These are thorough-going masks; twin-brothers from the country-side of Bergamo, strongly contrasted in their characters, yet holding certain points in common.[37] First comes Arlecchino, the eldest and most typical of Italian masks, and the one who has preserved its outlines to the present day. His party-coloured, tight-fitting suit reproduces the rags and patches of a rustic servant.

On his head is a little round cap, with a tuft made out of a hare's or rabbit's scut. He is always on the move, light-headed, gluttonous, gay, pliable, credulous, ingenuously nave and silly. The glittering ubiquitous Harlequin of our pantomimes transforms him into a mute ballet-dancer; but when the type was created, Arlecchino spoke and amused the audience as much by his absurdities and uncouth jokes as by his perpetual mobility.

Time would fail to tell of the infinite modifications which this type a.s.sumed under the hands of successive able actors. Truffaldino, the delight of Venice, Zaccagnino, Trivellino, Mestolino, Bagattino, Guazzetto, Stoppino, Burattino, and the idiotic Mezzettino, were all descended from this parent stock.

Side by side with Arlecchino goes his more astute and knavish brother Brigh.e.l.la. He is also Bergamasque of the purest breed. But he holds something from the Davus and Geta of Latin comedy. He is the roguish, clever, cowardly, pimping servant of the young spendthrift, who helps his master to deceive his father and seduce his neighbour's wife or daughter. Brigh.e.l.la wears a loose white shirt trimmed with green, and wide white trousers. On his head is a conical hat, plumed with red feathers, which yields place in course of time to the white cap of our clowns. His mask is brown, cut off above the upper lip, over which a pair of short moustachios bristle. Like Arlecchino, Brigh.e.l.la gave birth to a great variety of a.s.similated types. Unscrupulous Pedrolino, Beltramo, Bagolino, Frontino, Sganarello, Mascarillo, Figaro, Finocchio, Fantino, Gradellino, Traccagnino are his more or less legitimate offspring. He enters French comedy under the names of Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin. He creates a character of opera with Figaro.

Unlike Arlecchino, who becomes at last a silent ballet-dancer, Brigh.e.l.la grows more vocal and distinct as time advances, until, in the plays of Moliere and Beaumarchais, he is hardly distinguishable from a _servus_ of Latin comedy modernised. Indeed, just as Pantalone and Il Dottore approximate to the _senes_, so Arlecchino and Brigh.e.l.la shade off into the _servi_; and all their countless progeny are variations on the theme of stupid or roguish varlets.

The four main masks, with their attendant groups of subordinates, have pa.s.sed before us; but a mult.i.tude whom no man can number and no words can describe press on from behind. Perhaps the first place should be given to the _Servetta_. Her names are legion. Colombina, the sweetheart of Arlecchino and Pulcinella, Rosetta, Florentine Pasquella, Argentina, Diamantina, Venetian Smeraldina, Saporita, Carmosina; under all her t.i.tles, and with every shade of character ascribed to her by the free handling of successive actresses, she remains the sprightly, witty, shifty pendant to the Zanni.[38] Not a true mask, however; for the Servetta wears her own face and form, only a.s.suming the costume and dialect of the region she prefers to hail from. Like her lover Arlecchino, Colombina underwent a long series of transformations before she became the fairy-like being who flits behind the footlights of our theatres on winter evenings. And, like Brigh.e.l.la, written comedy blended her with the fixed characters of drama under the name of the soubrette.

Susanna in the _Nozze di Figaro_ is a familiar example of Colombina in her latest dramatic development.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLOMBINA (1683)

_Ill.u.s.trating the Italian Commedia dell' Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]

The _Servette_ in their many-coloured _Contadina_ dresses have pa.s.sed by. Close upon their heels press forward a chattering grimacing group from Naples. Pulcinella leads the way, for he must still keep Colombina in sight. In him, far more than in Arlecchino, the genius of a nation lives incarnate; and this he partly owes to a poor artisan of Naples, Francesco Cerlone, who fixed the type with inimitable humour in the last century.[39] Pulcinella has had whole volumes written on his pedigree. Some authors find him depicted on the walls of Pompeii; others trace him in statuettes and masks of antiquity. The one point which seems to be certain is, that he made his appearance on the public stage toward the end of the sixteenth century, wearing the white shirt and breeches of a rustic from Acerra. His black mask, long nose, humpback, protruding stomach, dagger and truncheon, were later additions. Whatever connection there may be between Pulcinella and the masks of cla.s.sical antiquity--and I have already attempted to show how I think that connection ought to be conceived[40]--he was, at his debut, regarded as the type of a Campanian villager, established at Naples in the quality of servant. Pulcinella is thus the Southern a.n.a.logue of Bergamasque Brigh.e.l.la and Arlecchino. Gradually he absorbed the humours of the Neapolitan proletariate, and became the burlesque mirror of their manners and ways of thinking. Time's whirligig has made him the hero of our puppet-shows, and he enjoys cosmopolitan celebrity under the name of Punch.

Coviello goes along with him, a Calabrian mask, which was sustained with applause by Salvator Rosa at Rome. He belongs to the buffoon cla.s.s, and is distinguished by his mandoline and ballad-singing. After him walks Tartaglia, afflicted with an incurable stammer, which renders his magisterial airs and graces ludicrous. Tartaglia has something in him of the Doctor; but this part lent itself to great varieties of treatment.

We shall see what play Gozzi made with it.

But now our ears are deafened with a clash of arms, rumbling of drums, pistol-shots, and shouted execrations. A fantastic extravagant troop of soldiers march upon the stage. At their head goes the swaggering Capitano. He is a Spaniard, armed to the teeth, loaded with outlandish weapons, twirling huge moustachios, frowning, swearing, boasting, quarrelling, thieving, wenching, and shrinking into corners when he meets a man of courage. Sometimes he affects the melancholy grandeur of Don Quixote. Sometimes he leans to the garrulity of Bobadil. Sometimes he a.s.sumes the serious ferocity of a brigand chief or the haughty punctiliousness of a hidalgo. Still he remains at bottom the caricature of professional soldiers, as they plagued and infested Italy under the Spanish domination. His language soars into the wildest hyperboles and euphuisms. He cannot speak without new-coined oaths and frothy metaphors and vaunts that shake heaven, earth, and sea. But the slightest trial of his valour breaks the bubble, and he cringes like a whipped hound.

The Capitano talked a mixture of Neapolitan and Spanish. His part, which required to be sustained at a high pitch of burlesque upon a single note of bragging insolence, was not unfrequently written, and none of these fixed characters a.s.sumed more stereotyped outlines. The _Miles Gloriosus_ of Latin comedy reappeared in him, and helped to mould the modern type. The ramifications of this character were innumerable. A celebrated actor, Francesco Andreini (born at Pistoja in 1548), helped to create its form. He called himself "Capitan Spavento da Valle Inferna." Then followed Ariararche, Diacatolicon, Leucopigo and Melampigo (white and black b.u.t.tocks), Coccodrillo, Matamoros, Scaramuccia (created by Tiberio Fiorelli of Naples), Fraca.s.sa, Rinoceronte, Giangiurgolo, Bombardon, Meo Squaquara, Spezzaferro, Terremoto. The list might be prolonged until the page was filled. Every variety of the burlesque son of Mars, from a delicate Adonis to a fire-eater, obtained impersonation from one or other able sustainer of the part. And a host of minor b.a.s.t.a.r.d braggarts, like the Trasteverine Meo Patacco, perpetuated the fun long after the great Capitano had quitted the public stage. Some of these types survive in literature.

Scaramouche is known to us, and Gautier has immortalised Fraca.s.se.

In the rabble which follows this noisy band of warriors we discern several buffoons of the long-robed tribe--Neapolitan Pancrazio, Biscegliese, and Cucuzzietto, Sienese Ca.s.sandro and Roman Ca.s.sandrino--who have more or less affinity with the Dottore. Il Pedante walks apart, and attracts attention by his Maccaronic Latin and eccentric morals. He has the poems of Fidenzio Glottogrysio in his hands, which he presses on the attention of a smooth-chinned pupil.[41]

Don Fastidio distinguishes himself from the vulgar herd by his enormous nose, and lantern jaws, and long lean figure, and preposterous citations from the law reports of Naples. Cavicchio tells silly tales and sings his Norcian songs. Il Desavedo burlesques the "dude" of Parma, and Narcisino plays the "masher" of Bologna to the life. Burattino comes upon the stage in a score of disguises, now gardener, now shopkeeper, now valet, always the fool and knave combined, impostor and imposed on.[42] The Notajo, with huge spectacles upon his nose and swan's quill stuck behind his spreading ears, murmuring a nasal drawl, and tripping himself up at every step in his long skirts, leads up the rear.

Rope-dancers, ballerini, Pasquarielli, Pierrots, conclude the show, dancing and pirouetting after their more vocal comrades.

It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to do justice to the manifold and motley crowd of the Italian masks. Even Callot, whose burin has bequeathed to us so many salient portraits of the types he saw in action, leaves the imagination cold. As I have remarked above, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ combined fixity of outline in the masks with illimitable plasticity in the details communicated by the genius and personality of their sustainers. The mask, the traditional character, was something which a comedian a.s.sumed; but he dealt with it as he found it suited to his physical and mental qualities. Each distinguished actor re-created the part he represented. The improvised extempore rule of the game allowed him boundless license. Therefore, while the masks persisted, they varied with the men who wore them. Arlecchino became Truffaldino in the hands of Antonio Sacchi. The Capitano appeared as Scaramuccia in the person of Tiberio Fiorelli. Parts crossed and intercrossed. Pulcinella borrowed something from Arlecchino; Brigh.e.l.la patched himself with rags from Coviello's wardrobe. The dialect and local humours of South Italy were engrafted on types conventionalised in Lombard provinces. Tuscany took them up, and added her own biting wit. As in a kaleidoscope, the const.i.tuent fragments of the changeful whole a.s.sumed shapes and forms of infinite variety by clever shifting of each particle. Each company established for the performance of this comedy gave a fresh nuance to the combinations which the show permitted.

In each district it adopted a new local colour. The mask was recognised; the man who wore it was expected to remodel it upon himself. Folk came to the theatres, less to see the masks, than to see how an Andreini or a D'Arbes or a Costantini or a Riccoboni would sustain them. We who have lost the men, and lost well-nigh the memory of their performance, cannot hope to reconstruct the comedy in its entirety. Histrionic art always and everywhere suffers from the ephemeral conditions under which it has to be externalised. But this disadvantage is crushing in the case of an art which was left to the spontaneous creativeness of its great representatives.

VIII.

Intrigue of a simple kind formed the staple of these improvised comedies. Anything like refined studies of character or the development of calculated motives was rendered impossible by the conditions under which they were presented to the public. An artist pleased or displeased by the exhibition of his personality in masquerade, and his creation of a shade of difference for some known type. The plot, whether borrowed from the written drama, from Latin plays, or from the gossip of the market-place, was always of an amorous complexion. Fathers, lovers, guardians, varlets, priests, and panders played their parts in it. The action proceeded by means of disguises, sleeping-potions, changelings, pirates, sudden recognitions of lost relatives, phantoms, demoniacal possessions, burlesque exorcisms, shipwrecks, sacks of cities, bandits, kidnapped children. It is singular in what a narrow circle the machinery revolves. Unlike our own Romantic drama, the _Commedia dell' Arte_ made but few excursions into the regions of history, fable, mythology, and fancy. Its scene was an Italian piazza; and though we hear of thrilling adventures by land and sea, in forest and on fell, these are only used to loose a knot or to elucidate the transformation of some personage. We ought not to marvel at the limitations of this drama. They are explained by that close connection, on which I have already insisted, between the _Commedia dell' Arte_ and the _Commedia Erudita_. The new comedy supplied little but its masks; and these masks, as we have seen, were types of bourgeois and rustic characters, capable of infinite modification within prescribed boundaries. The end in view was not the delectation of the audience by a scenic drama, but the caricature and travesty of life as it appeared to every one. That caricature, executed with inexhaustible finesse and piquant sallies of fresh personality, accommodated itself to the antiquated framework of plots as old as Plautus.

If the _Commedia dell' Arte_ lacked fancy and invention in its ground-themes, this defect was compensated by audacious realism and Gargantuan humour. The indecency of these plays cannot be described. Men and women appeared naked on the stage. Unmentionable vices were boldly paraded. Buffoonery of the vilest description enhanced the finest strokes of burlesque sarcasm. Actors who created types which made the spirit of a nation live in effigy, condescended to tricks unworthy of a Yahoo. We have to accept the species, not as a branch of the legitimate drama, but as a carnival masquerade, in which humanity ran riot, jeering at its own indignities and foibles.

IX.

The stock in trade of an acting company consisted of some scores of plots in outline. Gozzi, writing in the eighteenth century, calculates that there may have been from three hundred to four hundred dramatic situations.[43] We possess a certain number of these scenari, as they were technically called Flaminio Scala published a collection of fifty in his _Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative_ (Venetia, 1611). The t.i.tles of about one hundred others survive from the archives of Basilio Locatelli and Domenico Biancolelli, incorporated in eighteenth-century histories of the Italian stage. The records of the theatres where Italians played at Paris supply t.i.tles of another set, and a few have been disinterred from miscellaneous sources. Quite recently a complete collection of well-formed _scenari_ was given to the press by Signor Adolfo Bartoli from a Magliabecchian MS. of the last century.[44] It contains twenty-two pieces.

Comparative study of these _scenari_ shows that the whole comedy was planned out, divided into acts and scenes, the parts of the several personages described in prose, their entrances and exits indicated, and what they had to do laid down in detail. The execution was left to the actors; and it is difficult to form a correct conception of the acted play from the dry bones of its _ossatura._ "Only one thing afflicts me,"

said our Marston in the preface to his _Malcontent_: "to think that scenes invented merely to be spoken, should be inforcively published to be read." And again, in his preface to the _Fawne_, "Comedies are writ to be spoken, not read; remember the life of these things consists in action." If that was true of pieces composed in dialogue by an English playwright of the Elizabethan age, how far more true is it of the skeletons of comedies, which avowedly owed their force and spirit to extemporaneous talent! Reading them, we feel that we are viewing the machine of stakes and irons which a sculptor sets up before he begins to mould the figure of an athlete or a G.o.ddess in plastic clay.[45]

The _scenario_, like the _plat_ described for us by Malone and Collier, was hung up behind the stage. Every actor referred to it while the play went forward, refreshing his memory with what he had to represent, and attending to his entrances. But before the curtain lifted a previous process had been gone through. This was called _Concertare il soggetto_.

The company met in their green-room. What followed may be told in the words of a seventeenth-century writer on the technique of the _Commedia dell' Arte_.[46] "The Ch.o.r.egus, who rules and guides the troupe by his ability and experience, has to plan the subject, to show how the action shall be conducted, the dialogues concluded, and new sallies of wit or humour introduced. It is not merely his business to read the plot aloud, but also to set forth the personages with their names and qualities, to explain the drama, describe localities, and suggest extemporaneous additions. For instance, he shall begin by saying: 'The comedy we have to represent is so-and-so; the personages such-and-such; the houses are on this side and on that.' Then he will unfold the argument. He will impress upon his comrades the necessity of bearing well in mind the place where they are supposed to be, the names of people and the business they are engaged in, so that they shall not confound Rome with Naples, or say that they have come from Spain when they are bound from Germany. A father must not forget his son's name, nor a lover his lady's. It is also most important that the houses in which the action has to take place should be accurately known. To knock at the wrong door, or to take refuge in the home of your enemy, would spoil all.

Afterwards, the planner of the subject must indicate occasions suited to the sallies of the several characters. 'Here a piece of buffoonery is right. A metaphor, or sarcasm, or hyperbole, or innuendo, would make a good effect there.' In fact, he has to show each actor how to play his part to best advantage in the circ.u.mstances of the piece. Then he must look to preventing inconvenient entrances and exits, providing that the stage be not left empty, and indicating proper ways of bringing scenes to their conclusion. After the Ch.o.r.egus has read this lecture to the troupe, they will meet and sketch the comedy in outline. Then they have the opportunity of bringing their own talents forward, and combining new effects. Yet, at such rehearsals, they must all be mindful to maintain the outlines of the subject, not to exceed their roles, nor yet to trust their recollection of similar plays performed under different conditions. The piece has each time to be produced afresh by the concerted action of the players who will bring it on the boards."

The Ch.o.r.egus was usually the _Capocomico_ or the first actor and manager of the company. He impressed his comrades with a certain unity of tone, brought out the talents of promising comedians, enlarged one part, curtailed another, and squared the piece to be performed with the capacities he could control. "When a new play has to be given," says another writer on this subject,[47] "the first actor calls the troupe together in the morning. He reads them out the plot, and explains every detail of the intrigue. In short, he acts the whole piece before them, points out to each player what his special business requires, indicates the customary sallies of wit and traits of humour, and shows how the several parts and talents of the actors can be best combined into a striking work of scenic art."

X.