Performance and Literature in the Commedia Dell'Arte (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Performance and Literature in the Commedia Dell’arte Erith Jaffe-Berg Performance and Literature in the Commedia Dell’arte. By Robert Henke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; pp. 263. $70.00 cloth. Recent studies of Commedia dell'Arte published by Italian theatre historians such as Ferruccio Marotti and Roberto Tessari have reflected the difficulty in connecting the theatre genre to "low culture" as opposed to "high culture." Their studies have shown that not only did dell'Arte actors sing in the emerging early opera of the late sixteenth century, but they often performed fully-scripted pastorals and tragedies as well as showcased their work before aristocratic audiences at court as well as for plebian audiences in the piazza. Robert Henke's work is important in adding to the examination of mutual influences of high and low culture. It addresses the question of literacy and orality in Commedia dell'Arte performances, deftly arguing for a creative "contamination" between literary and verbally transmitted materials. In his thoroughly researched and finely wrought study, Henke draws from a broad array of cultural materials to present the early-modern Commedia dell'Arte actor as an author and subject not only in stage performances but also in a variety of popular literature, including zanni texts, letters written to and from actors, as well as poems and eulogies in which actors are mentioned. Many of these texts are analyzed here in English for the first time, and therefore offer a handy resource for teachers and students of Commedia dell'Arte alike. Furthermore, with the exception of an important book by Tim Fitzpatrick (The Relationship of Oral and Literate Performance Processes in the Commedia dell'Arte: Beyond the Improvisation / Memorization, 1995), which is mostly focused on performance and the question of improvisation, Henke's work addresses a largely neglected area of study in Commedia dell'Arte—the relation between orality and literature—making it essential reading for scholars of both Commedia dell'Arte and Renaissance theatre. The book is organized into eleven chapters. The first two serve as a discussion of Henke's strategy and an overview of aspects of Commedia dell'Arte's system of characters and improvisational techniques. Chapter 3, "Residual Orality in Early Modern Italy and the Commedia dell'Arte" initiates the book's central focus by outlining aspects of oral culture that were still evident in the early-modern context. In this sometimes dense chapter Henke argues the Italian peninsula's "residually oral culture" in the late-sixteenth century created the basis for techniques culled from oral tradition. He then elaborates on the techniques by providing interesting examples that are more linguistically based than those presented in other chapters. For example, he emphasizes that the use of phonemic sound sequences (patterns of similar or dissimilar sounds) and stressed metrical units or sentences were useful as mnemonic devices in players' performances. By constant references to Commedia dell'Arte characters, however, Henke prevents the examination from becoming too technically discouraging to non-linguistics experts. By the same token, in this chapter Henke emphasizes how residual orality shaped rhetorical stylistics in the composition of speech. He exemplifies how repetition, the hallmark of extemporized speech, resulted in the stylistic mark of "copiousness," or "verbal amplification by means of extended variation" (33). At the same time, Henke reminds us that actors were themselves often highly literate cultural consumers who availed themselves of pamphlets, published collections of jokes, and books on etiquette. In the next three chapters Henke turns his attention to the buffoon and lover characters. Chapter 4 studies the Venetian buffoni, proto-Commedia dell' Arte actor-writers whose work informed that of the late sixteenth-century zanni. Chapter 5 discusses the work of early male Commedia dell'Arte actors and chapter 6 addresses that of early actresses such as Isabella Andreini but also Vincenza Armani, equally famous in her day but less discussed in theatre history texts. [End Page 539] Particularly interesting is chapter 7, "Zanni texts, 1576-1588," which highlights the work of Simone da Bologna, who tends to get less attention than other well known members of the Gelosi troupe. Henke closely studies the Lacrimoso Lamento, an oration written for Simone and published in...