VI.

The Commedia dell' Arte yields, upon analysis, three chief component factors. The four leading masks, Arlecchino and Brighella, 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 documents 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 entitled "Canto di Zanni e Magnifichi." The Magnifico corresponded to Pantalone; and I need not repeat that the Zanni were best known as Arlecchino and Brighella. 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 è 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 passed 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.