In "The Tempest," Shakespeare introduces a Masque, and also in his "Midsummer Nights' Dream," the play of "Pyramus and Thisbe," performed by the Clowns, is in burlesque of the Masque plays.
In both these two plays of the bard's, and in connection with the Masque plays, we see, from the stage directions in them, how Pantomime formed part of their effective representation.
In out heroding-herod in the way of splendour, showy dresses and expensive machinery, the Masque soon fell into decay; and, as Ben Jonson states, "The glory of all these solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholder's eyes; so short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison with their souls."
CHAPTER XI.
Italian Pantomime—Riccoboni—Broom's "Antipodes"—Gherardi—Extemporal Comedies—Salvator Rosa—Impromptu Acting.
Pantomime in Italy had two distinct features, one a species of buffoonery, termed Lazzi, and the other Extemporal or Improvised Comedies.
"Lazzi," mentions Riccoboni, in his "Histoire du Theâtre Italien," is a term corrupted from the old Tuscan Lacci, which signifies a knot, or something that connects. (Both the Lazzi and the Extemporal Comedies were all derived from the one original source, that of the Satirical drama of the Greeks, and perpetuated in the Fabulae Atellanae or Laudi Osci of Italy.)
Riccoboni continues: "These pleasantries, called Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie the whole together."
Lazzi is what we might term "bye play," which, by gesture and action, could not detract, but rather added to the effectiveness of the scene in progress.