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 classical 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'œuvre 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 assume 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 assumption 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 Hellas.[31] Out of the same persistent habits emerged the same kind of native drama; and just as the Atellanæ 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.