[In the following essay, Erenstein looks at the commedia dell'arte as a pan-European phenomenon and suggests that as farcical humor shifted gradually to satire the commedia lost much of its original character.]

No one can study the commedia dell'arte for long without encountering the word satire. Many scholars apparently find the two notions related. Constant Mic, equating caricature with satire, says that Italian commedia dell'arte actors would habitually introduce into their performances unmistakable satirical allusions to real-life situations, persons or issues¹. In his quest for the origins of the commedia dell'arte Toschi points out—among other things—the influence of medieval carnival satire on the new genre², while Kindermann holds that quite soon after the rise of the commedia dell'arte the prevailing interest in satire gave way to the art of pure acting skill³. Clearly opposed views on this point are held by Allardyce Nicoll⁴ and A.K. Dshiwelegow⁵. The latter sees the commedia dell'arte as concerned solely with sociocritical satire whereas the former writes that the true commedia dell'arte ‘shows not the slightest trace of social satire’ and, further, that the commedia dell'arte masks, ‘confessedly taken from actuality, were selected for their comic potentialities and not with any social-political objective’. These examples, which could be multiplied at will, will suffice to show what dire confusion prevails with respect to the notions of commedia dell'arte and, particularly, satire. Hence the welter of conflicting opinions sketched above.

In the past three or four decades there have been a number of studies which attempt to describe and explicate the phenomenon ‘satire’⁶. With the results obtained so far it ought to be possible to arrive at a well-defined notion of satire which will provide the theatre student with a suitable tool and help reduce drastically these misunderstandings. However, the scope of these studies is generally restricted to satire in literature, i.e. to satire in written texts regarded as finished structures. In drama, on the other hand, the written text is merely a component in the genesis of an artistic production which achieves its ultimate completion in performance. True, some of these studies also deal with examples of satire taken from dramatic writings, but they do so without going into the problem of how this satire works in performance and without suggesting the conditions that must be fulfilled if the satire is to get across as such to the audience. So far scant attention has been paid to the question of what is added to, or taken away from, the satiric content of a dramatic text by all those who contribute to the actual stage presentation for which the dramatist is presumed to have written his play. It is quite conceivable, for instance, that an overly droll production of a piece written in a satirical vein will work havoc with the original intentions of its author. The different manifestations of satire in various literary forms go to show that satire is not bound up with any particular art form but is determined by the author's intentions. As far as the staging of a satiric play is concerned we must add: and by the intentions of director and actors as well.

These studies agree that the satirist's intention is to hold up to ridicule, to expose or criticize certain individuals, prevalent beliefs, ideological fashions, topical events or situations. The devices used are mockery, irony, exaggeration. The tone may vary from light-hearted and cheerful to bitter and cynical, but there is invariably an element of Horace's ridens dicere verum. For satire to be effective, its target must be identifiable and familiar to the reading public or audience. This implies that a satirist writes primarily for his contemporaries, that he directs the shafts of his criticism at the here and now. A satiric text is intended for immediate consumption, and actors may join in the satirical attack through their style of acting, costumes, make-up or mime. The topical nature of the undertaking, the concern with actual events and current fashions, tends to make satiric plays a kind of instant drama which will rarely survive the fleeting day. If highly talented dramatists have occasionally written satiric plays that have remained popular and held the stage to this day, their survival is due not so much to their being satires as to the total dramatic impact of the plays. Since the intervening centuries have seen shifts in what are regarded as legitimate targets of satire, present-day audiences will be aware only of a form of satire from the past. In performance, the satirical element of such plays assumes a much milder aspect so that it becomes almost akin to parody, the distinction between parody and satire being that a parody ridicules, but does not denounce, certain individuals, situations or events.

It is entirely possible, however, that a modern director will adapt an old satiric drama to present-day conditions and bring both setting and mise en scène up to date, thereby revitalizing the satire. Even when in the past more universal human follies and foibles were being satirized, dramatists would give their critical onslaught a form and context recognizable to their contemporaries, but here later ages will find more to recognize and chuckle over. Every period has its nouveaux riches; all the same, a number of scenes in Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme will strike a modern audience as comedy or parody rather than as satire. To a later age a satiric scene becomes comic if it no longer retains its original relation to historical reality. Directors and actors have been apt to hasten this process by exploiting the comic aspects of such scenes to the hilt. A good example is the fencing-master scene in Molière's play.

Criticism implies an underlying system of standards and values on which an author (or actor) bases his criticism. Inevitably, it seems to me, an author will in his criticism react to actuality from the perspective of an ideal world which he has projected for himself and from which he derives his standards. A satirist may be aware to a greater or less extent of this ideal projection, but even when the process is largely unconscious, the satire derives its being from the tension existing between the ideal projection and its reflection in actuality.

This tension must therefore be present also in the performance of a satiric drama, at least if the director and actors are intent on putting the satire across in a recognizable manner. This means that in staging a satiric play they will be guided by their own ideal projection, which may correspond in greater or less degree with the author's. Unlike the author, they must always be aware of this tension between ideal and reality in order to control its effect in the performance. Another condition that must be fulfilled if the satire is to be recognizable to audiences is that it must influence the main action or at least be linked to it through a subplot, thus assuming a readily ascertainable function within the entire performance. It is only then that the criticism derived from a conscious or unconscious set of standards underlying the author's work will become visible. Again, it is only then that the actor's attempt to stimulate the audience to adopt a critical attitude towards the target of their criticism, or more fundamentally, to make the audience change their scale of values, will stand any chance of success. If the satire is confined to an isolated crack, without contributing to the developing structure of the play or without being in some other way related to it, the possible satiric effect dies with the laughter which the witty crack provokes. It is then no more than a hilarious moment without any consequences, insufficiently revealing the author's or actor's intentions. Its effect is much the same as that of a joke made by a politically uncommitted entertainer at the expense of, say, a well-known politician who has launched a widely unpopular measure. Cashing in on the widespread resentment against the measure, the entertainer will use this mood to draw a laugh. All he wants is to get this laugh; his aim is not to induce his audience to adopt critical attitudes towards the politician or his proposed measure. On the strength of the above considerations I now arrive at the following definition of satiric drama in performance:

Drawing on a well-defined frame of reference based on an explicit or implicit set of values underlying the text, a satiric performance ridicules and criticizes by means of mockery, irony or exaggeration certain individuals, prevalent beliefs, ideological fashions, topical events and situations or human vices, familiar and recognizable to the audience.

As the outcome of these reflections, I now propose to examine the satiric dimension of the commedia dell'arte in the period from 1560 to 1640.

The rise and growth of the commedia dell'arte saw the birth of the first professional troupes and simultaneously the first woman took the world stage as an actress. But it also ushered in actors' theatre. This means that, in examining the satiric dimensions of the commedia dell'arte, we shall—because of the absence of authors—be concerned solely with the intentions of the actors.

With the aid of the material that has come down to us, and taking into account the conditions under which the performances took place, we must try to form a picture of these performances and of their effect on the audiences of the time.

The rise and growth of the commedia dell'arte took place in a country torn by civil strife and largely occupied by Spain; after the Council of Trent the Church of Rome had launched a counter-offensive against the Reformation and, mainly under the auspices of the Jesuits, sought to get a firmer hold on the faithful. In a country undergoing such upheavals and a prey to chaos and lawlessness, overt criticism was tantamount to suicide. Anyone intent on voicing dissent and criticism was forced to do so in covert terms. The times seemed ripe for a genre like satire. But a troupe putting on satiric plays must of necessity address itself to a particular section of the public susceptible to, and appreciative of, such critical attitudes on the part of the actors.

However, there is nothing to show that the commedia dell'arte troupes did in fact address themselves to any particular section of the public. They drew their audiences from every stratum of society. Plays were acted in the open air or indoors for the common people, at the courts of Italy and France, but also before Spanish audiences in North and South Italy, as well as before liberal cardinals in Rome. Actors enjoyed no social security at all, and as professionals they were dependent on the favour of this widely varying public. Although improvisations by standard characters on certain set themes or scenarii remained their speciality and formed the nucleus of their repertoire, the same actors would appear at court in completely different plays such as tragedies, pastorals and intermezzi. Patronage was an all-important factor in those days. The numerous letters from actors' companies to princes, requesting permission to come and play at court or invoking their gracious protection, seem to bear out the supposition that courts provided the main source of income. Besides, the strolling companies needed royal protection from the incessant attacks by the clergy, to whom, as Barbieri wrote in La Supplica, actors (istrioni) were synonymous with witches (stregoni), and who saw the theatre as the favourite haunt of the devil⁷. Still, the fierce ecclesiastical onslaughts on professional actors were never organized or inspired by Rome and were confined to incidental harassment, though never so incidental that professional actors could afford to disregard them.

Their dependence on courts, where generous patrons could be found, the constant denunciations and harassment by ecclesiastics and the broad spectrum of audiences made it impossible for commedia dell'arte actors to indulge in anything like revolutionary or anti-establishment sentiments. Their struggle for life and the constant battle they had to wage to win recognition for their profession demanded so much effort that they could not at the same time set out deliberately to effect changes in public attitudes and awareness, not even—at least until the publication of Barbieri's La Supplica in 1628—where the standing of their own profession as a form of art was concerned.

As regards their repertoire, few complete texts have come down to us. Of their commedia all'improvviso all we have is scenarii, lazzi, illustrative material and spectators' comments. Of the other genres we know a number of plays, such as Isabella Andreini's pastoral, Mirtilla, the tragedies and tragicomedies by her son G.B. Andreini and the comedies of Niccoló Barbieri. Of the plays by non-actors which they performed, we know for instance Tasso's Aminta, which the Gelosi presented in 1573, having rehearsed for two months under Tasso himself. All these were plays without a trace of satire; they were included in the repertoire simply because there was a demand for plays of this kind among courtiers.

For their improvised performances we must make do with the meagre material that has survived. The scenarii set out timeless plots involving young men in love, who are thwarted by their parents and sometimes even have to contend with their own fathers as rivals in love. Their entanglements are unnecessarily complicated by a stupid zanni and subsequently solved by a clever zanni.

The scenarii contain no indications of conscious attempts at satire. But this does not of course rule out the possibility that the actors introduced satire into their improvizations as an integral part of the performance. If they did, we might expect to find traces of satire in the lazzi, or in preserved dialogues or monologues by characters like the innamorati, the Capitano, Pantalone and Zanni or Pantalone and the Dottore. But again we find no trace of satire. The lazzi are comic intermezzi which bear no relation to the context. That they were purely comic is confirmed by the fact that the most frequently found lazzi are those of fear, alarm, greed and gluttony. Even Isabella Andreini's elaborate literary lovers' dialogues on a variety of themes, published posthumously in 1618, contain no satire. They are no more than virtuoso demonstrations of her mastery of the language and of witty variations on concetti.

Nor did the masks, the tipi fissi, of the commedia dell'arte lend themselves readily to satire. They were abstractions from certain character types, with a single trait developed to grotesque proportions. The mask became the symbol of one prevailing passion and compelled the actor to act out that passion. At the same time each mask made a well-defined contribution to the plot line through its own highly specific and personal resources, visual as well as verbal. The scenarii show that comic possibilities were exploited to the hilt in a number of often ludicrous and highly unrealistic situations. Within such a framework a satirically intended remark would fail to produce the desired effect, since it had no function within the totality of the performance.

Another indication that satire in any guise or form was lacking in the commedia dell'arte can be found in the denunciations by the clergy of these performances all'improvviso. The charge was invariably corruption of morals, never the propagation of ideas regarded as a threat to the established order. In the face of attacks by the clergy the actors maintained that the avowed object was precisely to promote morality. They emphasized their beneficial influence, pointing out that their performances kept people off the streets where they would gamble, drink, whore and otherwise be tempted to leave the straight and narrow. Pier Maria Cecchini even claimed that wherever they gave night performances he had always heard the courtesans curse the actors and their plays, because they were losing customers⁸. This warrants the supposition that what the Church as the guardian of morality objected to was the manner in which such recognized taboo subjects as marriage, woman's honour and sex were mocked.

And yet the capitano mask could have provided the commedia dell'arte with a splendid opportunity to inject satire into its performances by ridiculing the Spanish usurpers, perhaps even encouraging resistance against the foreign tyrants. But the capitano does not go beyond the occasional adoption of a Spanish name like Mattamoros and knows but one passion: bragging about his utterly fantastic exploits. Either these capitani cherished their lives too much to indulge in any criticism of the Spanish regime or there was simply no room for this kind of satire in the commedia dell'arte.

All these findings suggest that commedia dell'arte performances were in the nature of rollicking farce much more than of comedy—satiric or otherwise. Their entertainment value lay in the appeal they made to lower instincts in their scoffing at established taboos.

This type of drama is devoid of topical interest; it is not restricted to any particular time or place and can without any form of adjustment be played in Mantua, Milan or Paris. This also accounts for the lack of development in scenarii or lazzi which, because they were not bound to any one place or time—and therefore never adapted to local conditions—could be played over and over again. The important thing was not what was acted but only the manner of acting. This same bias we also observe in critical notices, where it is always the individual acting that counts, never the play itself. With emphasis laid squarely on individual roles and the partial elements of the play, these performances tended to uphold existing structures rather than to question accepted standards. The Italian commedia dell'arte performance is therefore best defined as an improvised farce played by actors who for their bread and butter were prepared to act anything else required of them, depending on the fashion of the time. Critical attitudes towards the world around them are altogether absent and this critical stance is precisely a necessary condition for satire.

How then was it that the commedia dell'arte farce became satire: how did the verbal joke turn into a verbal weapon? For this change to take place, the commedia dell'arte had to be shorn of an essential characteristic, and this happened not in Italy but in France, where the Italian way of life and world of ideas were juxtaposed to the French. The influence of the commedia dell'arte on French comedy is unmistakeable, and Molière's indebtedness to the Italians is common knowledge. But all these impulses from the commedia dell'arte were harmoniously integrated within a specifically French tradition of comedy reflecting the French national character.

As long as the Italian commedia dell'arte troupes paid only brief visits to France, they were able to uphold their own tradition. Always on the move and always playing to fresh audiences, they found their own Italian repertoire entirely adequate, and tended more than ever to emphasize visual and mimic aspects in order to overcome the language barrier.

Things changed, however, when in 1660 the Ancienne troupe de la Comédie Italienne settled permanently in Paris. Under the influence of French taste the masks changed to conform more closely to the French way of life. This was manifested, for instance, in the servants' parts. Thanks to the individual talent of Domenico Biancolelli—both as manager of the troupe and as actor—Arlecchino achieved a successful transformation into Harlequin and won a place for himself in the Paris theatre. New masks, such as Colombine, Pierrot or Mezzetin, were created or evolved in conformity with French taste, while Scaramouche, introduced by Tiberio Fiorillo about 1640, became so popular that he completely ousted the Capitano from public favour.

In its early years the Comédie Italienne continued to be entirely Italian. Its emphasis was on verbal and mimic jokes, and the miming of plot elements became a regular part of the endeavour to put the story across. These attempts to achieve maximum audience understanding led to the inclusion of French texts within Italian performances. At first this practice would be restricted to one or just a few scenes, but once there was this break-through, French authors eagerly started writing plays for the Italian actors. This repertoire, acted between 1682 and 1697, is well represented in Gherardi's edition of the Théâtre Italien.

Once written dramas or scenes by French authors came to be a regular feature of the repertoire, improvisation, one of the fundamental characteristics of the commedia dell'arte, was on the way out, even though a suggestion of improvisation persisted in the French dialogues. When they had become established in Paris, where they permanently took over the Palais Royal, the Italians ceased to be strolling actors, ever in search of fresh audiences. Also, they began to conform more and more to French taste with a resulting refinement of the commedia dell'arte masks. All the same, we must have no unduly high expectations of the sophistication of the plays, as appears from the following lazzi in L'Empereur dans la Lune dating from 1684, in which the Docteur has to bow low before Arlequin, who plays the Emperor in the Moon:

The Docteur lifts his hat and makes his bow. Arlequin who faces him also bows, turns round and says to the Docteur: ‘Lower, Sir, lower.’ The Docteur bows even lower and at the same time Arlequin lifts his backside so that the Docteur pokes his nose into it. After this Italian lazzi, etc.

This type of broad humour was not peculiar to the Italians, as can be seen from an unpublished stanza which Lesage wrote twenty years later for the Théâtre de la Foire, where not a single word of Italian was spoken and French esprit entirely set the tone. Arlequin sings:

Il faut une pièce farcie
De couplets gras, de tours gaillards,
Et nous aimons à la folie
Les pots de chambre et les pétards:
C'est cela seul qui nous fait rire,
Talalerire.(9)

While the introduction of French texts from 1682 onward certainly promoted intelligibility, it was almost inevitable that the various masks should lose their distinctive individual character which each actor had evolved for himself and made his trademark. The primary passions symbolized by the different masks no longer determined the content and form of the shows; they retreated before an alien form of entertainment imported from outside the commedia dell'arte. Arlecchino no longer remained a greedy and stupid servant whose main passion was ‘guzzling’ but was transformed into a shrewd servant, ‘un grand diseur de bon-mots’, given to publicly philosophizing about life. Arlequin—recognizable only by his costume—was no longer a clearly defined rôle within which the actor improvised, devising lazzi and creating ever more complex plot-entanglements, but he became an actor playing many parts, preferably in one and the same play, in order to demonstrate, in addition to his protean character, his superb prowess. Improvisation on a given scenario by a number of masks who each in turn were allowed their big scene was superseded by the acting of a set text, still permitting some scope for improvisation but on a greatly reduced scale, and always requiring new rôles which, with the exception of the servants, often had little to do with the original stock characters. Arlequin acted as Arlequin in just one or two scenes and for the rest filled in with whatever the plot called for: lawyers and pedants, old gentlemen and young lovers, Olympic gods and foreign princes. And whether he fulminated or cracked rather obvious jokes, his main task was still to exploit comic effects through his lazzi and whatever other opportunities the text offered. By now the original Italian commedia all'improvviso no longer led a life of its own, having been reduced to intermezzi in French comedies and farces.

The introduction of French-speaking scenes cleared the way for far more extensive topical allusions to Paris life. Gherardi's collection contains innumerable allusions to contemporary events and situations, and universal human foibles and vices also came in for their share of censure.

For Attinger this was a sufficient reason to speak constantly of satire in the Comédie Italienne¹⁰, while Kindermann wrote that improvisation as the main ingredient was relegated to the background and comic action infused with local colour and trenchant social satire became all the rage¹¹. Again it is to be regretted that both Attinger and Kindermann have failed to state precisely what they understand by satire. A study of the contents, structure and, where possible, manner of presentation of the texts has made me rather sceptical of a qualification like ‘trenchant social satire’; while Attinger is only too apt to call texts ‘satiric’ on the strength of isolated topical allusions.

Satiric content in the texts of Gherardi's collection cannot be denied, the question being merely, how much? To Gherardi himself the satire was so self-evident that in the ‘Avertissement’ of his edition he wrote: ‘Je passe sous silence la satyre fine et delicate.’ Even before these texts were published, the Mercure Galant of 1684 had corroborated Gherardi's view by speaking of these ‘scènes Françoises, pleines d'une satire agréable, et très-finement tournées’¹². These accounts by an actor (Gherardi took up the Arlequin role upon Biancolelli's death in 1688) and by an eyewitness suggest that the satire went beyond text and author's intentions alone. Accounts like these have led scholars to assume that satire was the regular thing in every performance and in every play and, depending on their own ideas about satire, to add such qualifications as ‘trenchant’, ‘sociocritical’ or ‘grotesque’.

Since this satiric intention is not always so self-evident in these texts and stage presentations to me as it was to, say, Gherardi—who after all was in a better position to judge—I have had recourse to the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Françoise (Paris, 1694), which defined ‘satyre’ as a work in prose or verse written to denounce and criticize vices, uncontrolled passions, follies and hubris. A secondary meaning given is ‘tout discours piquant, médisant’, i.e. any stinging or backbiting discourse or speech. This is clearly a much broader interpretation than our current definition of satire and my formulation derived from recent studies. Let us therefore return to the texts and the performances and inquire more closely into their satiric nature.

The use of French and the advent of French text writers established the ‘esprit gaulois’ as a regular feature of the performances of the comédiens italiens. Even a superficial analysis of the texts that have come down to us makes it quite clear that this ‘esprit gaulois’ and the commedia dell'arte were fundamentally incompatible in spite of the adaptation of the masks to French taste and of increasing sophistication of the repertoire and lazzi. This is hardly surprising in performances by Italian actors of works by French authors who had not been nurtured in the commedia dell'arte tradition. The Franco-Italian way of acting and the French style of writing—taking for its two main sources of inspiration daily life in Paris and the works of Molière—continued to exist side by side as distinct entities, even in stage presentations, although these suggested a high degree of integration. It was in fact the combination of these two elements which gave the performances their peculiar charm and comic effects.

In the texts we can distinguish two kinds of scenes, each serving its own distinct purpose: scenes that refer to, and sometimes criticise, topical matters, and scenes that aim at exploiting the comic talents of the comédiens italiens and which seek to entertain by means of farce-like entanglements and effects.

These scenes were combined with a fairly straightforward plot, which in the majority of the fifty-five pieces collected by Gherardi is basically to the effect that a young daughter is betrothed to an old man whom she does not love, having bestowed her heart on someone else. The wily pranks of Arlequin, Colombine and/or other servant types like Pierrot, Scaramouche and Mezzetin are enlisted to discredit the old man and unite the young lovers. The elements of farce and especially the topical scenes may take up so much of the play that the love intrigue is relegated to a mere subplot.

Strikingly, these subplots always feature personages outside the stock characters of the commedia dell'arte. Since these peculiarly French personages are in fact acted by the stock characters, often without any form of disguise, a comic dimension is added to the play. When, for instance, Arlequin adopts the part of family lawyer as a perfectly straight rôle, his very appearance on the stage produces a comic effect because of the mask he is wearing as well as the motley legs protruding from under his black topcoat. No character dressed like this can be taken wholly seriously, and no matter how stinging his denunciations may be, their effect is inevitably much milder because of the context in which the satire figures. It is in this kind of scene, which leaves no room for the original mask, and in which Arlequin has ceased to function as zanni, that we find most references to actuality and the most frequent attempts on the part of the author to induce critical attitudes in his audience.

It seems to me that today we can no longer dub each and every allusion to French conditions ‘satire’. Many of these allusions, particularly isolated ones, were thrown in only to raise a laugh. The Banqueroutier contains a scene in which Pasquariel in utter dismay comes rushing on with bad news which he can hardly bring himself to tell. The dialogue which unfolds between master and servant has this joke: ‘Persillet: Est-ce que ma femme est morte? Pasquariel: Le ciel ne vous aime pas assés pour cela.’ Even those who are unwilling to accept my definition of satire will find it hard to interpret this as a piece of satire on the position of women in Paris of the 1690s. Such jokes on marriage, on adulterous, coquettish or over-fastidious women are scattered thick through the texts. Not least because of their frequently incidental character, I find it extremely hard to see them as attempts to stimulate critical attitudes or bring about changes in public awareness with respect to woman and her desire for emancipation, or regarding marriage or coquetry: rather, it seems to me, these jokes use an established institution like marriage or the phenomenon ‘woman’ with her potential for good or evil merely to raise an easy laugh.

Here author and actors alike were not in the least concerned to attack human failings by exposing them in a critical spirit, as Molière did in Les précieuses ridicules and Les femmes savantes; rather, they seized gratefully upon these foibles to entertain by ridiculing them. Because they set out to show up eternal and basically unchanging vices in stock situations involving characters who seemed more like types than persons of flesh and blood, these stage presentations assumed the character of farce rather than comedy. For comedy, dealing as it does in more fully human characters and more readily recognizable situations, is essentially satiric because it seeks to entertain by holding up to ridicule universal human failings and thoughtless adherence to certain patterns of behaviour, and because it seeks thereby to teach implicit lessons. Comedy thus leaves no room for unduly droll effects which distract attention from its purpose to teach as well as to delight.

Molière, besides being a great comic artist, was an eminent satirist, who sincerely appealed to his audiences to adopt critical attitudes towards the objects of his ridicule. This sincerity of purpose is lacking in most pieces written for the comédiens italiens. On the contrary, on reading these texts I cannot help feeling that the authors would have evinced heartfelt regret if what they denounced had really been remedied, since this would have put paid to their livelihood as well as to their easily won laughs. This same lack of commitment, with which they expressed their ‘esprit gaulois’, also appears from the eagerness with which in their plays they seized on the rivalry between the Italian actors and the Comédie Française and the Opéra. This rivalry grew as the comédiens italiens put more French texts in their performances and drew larger audiences than their rivals.

All the same, allusions to this competition do not go beyond making fun of the rival actors and parodying their styles. The purpose of the jokes is never to direct basic criticism at existing conditions from an ideal projection of what the Paris theatre should be like, and thereby to change the present situation. Every single well-known passage in Le Cid was parodied. There was also familiar parody of Racine's Bérénice in Arlequin Prothée, where we find the following variant of Bérénice, Act II, scene I:

ARLEQUIN as Titus, SCARAMOUCHE as Paulin.
ARLEQUIN:
A-t-on vu de ma part, le roi de Comagene?
Sçait-il que je l'attends?
SCARAMOUCHE:
Si signor, si signor.
ARLEQUIN:
Parle François. Je dis que tu n'es qu'un butor.
Répons, âne:
Que fait la reine Berenice?
SCARAMOUCHE:
La reina Berenice … la reina … Ber … Berenice,
elle est la haut qui pisse, signor … et … per se ben …
ARLEQUIN:
Parle, acheve! fy donc. Quel Paulin! quelle bête!
Diable soit de Paulin, et de sa confidence!
Cheval, âne bâté, va hors de ma presence.
Cours apprendre ton rolle, évite ma fureur,
Indiscret confident d'un discret empereur.
                                                                                                    (Scaramouche s'en va.)
(Aux auditeurs)
Ce début n'est pas mal, messieurs, et sur ce ton
Je m'en vais effacer Floridor et Baron.

Here too satire seems to me too big a word; it would be used inappropriately.

In my opinion the same thing goes for most of the topical allusions of the time. The generally isolated cracks and brief verbal jokes do not aspire beyond the level of parody or comic effect. The absence of a context providing a wider frame for the jokes militates against satiric intent. Whenever a text shows evidence of such satiric intent, we must still answer the question whether the Italian actors deliberately tried to act out the satire. A good example is found in what is generally regarded as the most satiric piece in Gherardi's collection, Fatouville's Le Banqueroutier, which savagely denounces the speculative mania of the day and the sharp practices by which one speculator enriched himself at the expense of others. This social satire even provides the main theme of the play, the lovers and their problem being relegated to a subplot. The satire is mitigated by scenes that bear little relation to the main plot and are scattered through the play as a kind of intermezzi. In these scenes Arlequin, to demonstrate his prowess, plays a wide variety of rôles, while in the main plot he is also the lawyer Ressource, who for ample remuneration devises the knaveries and carries them out. It is surprising that in this play, which shows evidence of the author's intention to promote critical attitudes towards the disastrous practices of speculators, the author should not have carried his disapproval to the point where he has the malpractitioners come to a sticky end. There is no poetic justice rewarding the goodies and punishing the baddies. On the contrary, the evil designs of the villains are entirely successful, and I'm very doubtful whether in devising this ending Fatouville deliberately sought to show what actually happens in real life. If the satire had been seriously intended, the author would have upheld his ideal projection and its attendant standards in having the false lawyer's tricks miscarry, thereby giving the play an exemplary effect. With the ending as it stands, he stimulated rather than discountenanced these malodorous practices, all the more because the subplots and the Italian manner of presentation were bound to temper the satire and take some of the sting out of his attack. Possibly he had to contend with his Italian actors, who perhaps were not prepared to see the satire carried to that length. Another conspicuous feature of the play is that for his satire the author made no use whatsoever of the commedia dell'arte masks in their original functions.

Thus we see that when after 1682 French scenes came to be included in their stage presentations, the commedia dell'arte masks became increasingly devitalized as they more and more tended to become the mouthpieces of French authors.

The extent to which the comédiens italiens were prepared for the sake of success and gain to frenchify their repertoire and increasingly place their comic talents at the disposal of French dramatists seriously antagonized others in the profession. This resentment grew until the actors of the Comédie Française and the Opéra left nothing untried to discredit them with Louis XIV. Their efforts were finally crowned with success when in 1697 the mere rumour that Madame de Maintenon was the target of their mockery in La fausse prude induced Louis to revoke the licence of the comédiens italiens and order them to leave Paris.

But the actors had reaped too much success with characters like Arlequin, Mezzetin, Scaramouche and Colombine to be consigned to oblivion. Their memory lived on and was constantly revived by the many reprints of the plays collected by Gherardi and in the paintings and drawings by Gillot, Watteau's teacher. Small wonder then that the Théâtre de la Foire took over their most popular masks and made these the central characters in their plays. As a result, another peculiar characteristic was lost, since from that moment these characters were played by French actors.

The struggle between these illegal fringe theatres and the established and privileged Comédie Française and the Opéra lasted till 1791 and gave rise to new genres like vaudeville and opéra comique. It was not an evenly matched contest and public sympathy was with the underdogs, who again and again found legal loopholes that enabled them to provide fresh theatrical fare. In the main this was no more than farcelike entertainment because of the handicaps under which the actors laboured. Here again the purely comic effects were entrusted to Harlequin whose main business it was to parody the established troupes who sought to have their performances stopped. The struggle for existence and recognition determined the character of their performances, which indeed were not noted for their topical interest. In one of his earliest plays Le Sage might have Mister Vaudeville sing:

Bonne musique
Fine critique
Tout y pique.(13)

But the collection of plays by Le Sage and D'Orneval¹⁴ falls far short of the critical level of the Gherardi collection. Their only concern was parody, as many stage indications explicitly stated. Even the nouvelle troupe des comédiens italiens, who from 1716 were licensed to perform in Paris, were parodied by Harlequin and his fellows. The fact that commedia dell'arte performances were parodied by characters derived from the commedia dell'arte shows clearly that Harlequin and his mates in the Théâtre de la Foire had, apart from their outward appearance, severed all their bonds with the original commedia dell'arte masks. They had degenerated into mere stereotypes, utterly dependent on authors, and they could be used for any purpose from droll entertainment to trenchant satire.

To what extent French actors possibly made a deliberate effort at satire in their style of acting is virtually impossible to ascertain. One thing was certain, however: whenever an author used these characters, his play was bound to have a farcelike undertone. This was exactly the reason why, e.g. in Germany in 1737, Gottsched symbolically banished the Harlekin-character from the theatre; this character developed under the influence of the commedia dell'arte and the Théâtre italien, and wherever Harlekin appeared sheer comic effects tended to be pursued at the expense of moral teaching¹⁵.

How easily these stereotypes could be used for almost any purpose can be observed quite clearly in a country where the Italian commedia dell'arte had never become established and where its only influence had been through French strolling companies. This was the case in Holland, which after about 1680 tended to imitate French culture almost slavishly and where every Parisian fad or fashion was faithfully copied. Early in the eighteenth century Holland saw French companies touring in a repertoire based on the performances of the comédiens italiens and the Théâtre de la Foire. Via printed texts as well as performances Dutch authors became familiar with Arlequin, Scaramouche, Colombine and other masks. Because the Dutch knew nothing of their background, the characters could readily be used for various types of comedy but also for slapstick farces as well as for biting satires.

A series of sixteen engravings by G.H. Xaverij of scenes from one of these unpretentious farces still survives and is reproduced in the French edition of Duchartre's La comédie italienne (Paris, 1925). In this farce Arlequin is indisposed and the Docteur diagnoses the cause as pregnancy. Arlequin lays six eggs, which he proceeds to hatch out, but five of the six children die. Assisted by his servant, Piro, he undertakes to raise the little one, changing his nappies, complaining about all the filth and even suckling it. In the teeth of all mockery he persists in his nursing effort, and the last scene shows little Arlequin conning his ABC. A scatterbrained plot which only deserves mention because of the engravings, which date from some time after 1718, and because of Arlequin's double rôle of father and mother.

Far more interesting is the manner in which in 1720 the most original eighteenth-century Dutch dramatist, Pieter Langendijk (1683-1756), launched a savage attack on the promoters of the South Sea scheme, introduced in France by John Law and subsequently copied in both England and Holland. The speculative fever of investors in South Sea shares and Mississippi Company stock rose to an unprecedented pitch, and in Holland, as in France, enormous sums changed hands. The gambling urge, as deepseated a national characteristic of the Dutch as their tendency to moralize, set many pens scratching. Pamphlets, songs, broadsides and sonnets inundated the country. No fewer than nine plays were written in which the excesses were denounced or sometimes lightheartedly satirized. Of these nine plays, which clearly showed the authors' concern over this social frenzy, Langendijk wrote two, one an original comedy in three acts, Quincampoix of de Windhandelaars¹⁶, and a one-act play, Arlequyn Actionist, which the author himself called a free imitation of a presently unknown French model. The original play must have been written between 1715 and 1720 for the Théâtre de la Foire. This can be inferred from the character of Gille in Langendijk's play, which was inspired by the French character of Gilles, who was an original creation by the Théâtre de la Foire and in Paris was a tremendous popular success. In view of the subject matter and the character of Gille, I believe that Langendijk erroneously stated in the 1720 edition of the play that it was ‘in imitation of the Théâtre italien’.

In this one-act play Kapitano untruthfully gives out that he will sail with a whole shipload of shares to Southland to make his fortune there by trading. Scaramoes is his first mate, Kolombine is the cook and Mezetijn the barber. The purpose of this ruse is to make share prices soar. When Arlequyn, who poses as a ship's chandler, has supplied a chest full of windbags in exchange for half a pound of shares, a grotesque fight ensues between Kapitano, who behaves in a very cowardly manner, and Arlequyn. The Kapitano's forces win and Arlequyn, taken prisoner, is locked into a chest. The Kapitano has fainted but is revived by the smell of a burning share. While in the chest Arlequyn has disguised himself as Mercury, and on his release from the chest he delivers a philippic against the South Sea promoters. His disguise is penetrated, however, and he is forced to surrender all his shares in exchange for his freedom. Having done so, he demonstrates in a sublime piece of acting, at Kapitano's request, what will become of the share trade: He sells a burning candle end to Kapitano in exchange for a coin. Kapitano in turn sells the candle end to Scaramoes for a number of shares. By singing the praises of his candle end and the light it gives, Scaramoes manages to dispose of it for still more shares. Thus the candle end passes from hand to hand, but as its price rises its life span decreases until finally Gille, having paid for it with a whole armful of shares, burns his fingers and drops the guttering wick. It falls into the pile of shares, which goes up in flames. No more convincing object lesson on the worthlessness of the shares could have been given on the stage. A ballet concludes this one-act play, which was acted ten times in a single month to great public acclaim.

We see here how the author deliberately denounced the speculative mania, ridiculing it by reference to a well-defined set of values. From first to last this critical stance governs the developing structure of the play. The Dutch characters, harking back to the Théâtre de la Foire, helped to set the comedy tone needed for effective ridicule of the target of satire. Played as it was by Dutch actors, who were entirely innocent of all experience of the Italian commedia dell'arte that might have tempted them to overdo the comic effects, the satire was effectively conveyed in the actual performance. It was possible for the castigat ridendo mores adage to be successfully put into practice because there was no chance of the Dutch audiences, any more than the actors themselves, being distracted by memories of the comédiens italiens. With their lazzi and improvised Italian intermezzi, these latter had inserted purely farcelike elements in the written French texts and thus impaired the sometimes satiric intentions of the authors, distracting attention from what was being denounced.

This shows that the shift from verbal joke to verbal weapon becomes possible only as more and more elements of the original Italian commedia dell'arte were being abandoned. The more the commedia dell'arte lost its ‘arte’ aspect of pure art and theatrical skill—the game played only for the sake of the game as an expression of the play instinct and zest for life—and the more the masks degenerated to meaningless stereotypes, the more this genre became adapted to conveying the satiric intentions of authors, who could fashion the characters to suit their intentions.

The decay of the commedia dell'arte gave rise to new genres which made possible new developments in the theatre. As such this decay is a normal phase in a continuous process of change. Thanks to these changes first authors, and at a later stage actors also, were given a chance to use devitalized commedia dell'arte masks to write and act satires for which there had been no room in the Italian commedia all'improvviso.

Notes

1. Constant Mic, La commedia dell'arte (Paris, 1927), 66.

2. P. Toschi, Le origini del teatro italiano (Torino, 1955), 723.

3. H. Kindermann, Theatergeschichte Europas (Salzburg, Otto Müller Verlag, 1959), vol.III, 277.

4. Allardyce Nicoll, The World of Harlequin (Cambridge, U.P., 1963), 150ff.

5. A.K. Dshiwelegow, Commedia dell'arte (Berlin, Henschelverlag, 1958), passim.

6. I.e. David Worcester, The Art of Satire (New York, Russell & Russell, 1960² (1940); Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N.J., Princeton U.P., 1957); Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire (Princeton, N.J., Princeton U.P., 1960); Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, N.J., Princeton U.P., 1962); Alvin B. Kernan, The Plot of Satire (New Haven, Conn., Yale U.P., 1965).

7. Nicolò Barbieri, La supplica. Discorso famigliare a quelli che trattano de' comici con studio critico, note e varianti di Ferdinando Taviani (Milan, Il Polifilo, 1971), 71, and Ferdinando Taviani, La fascinazione del teatro (Rome, Bulzoni, 1969), LII.

8. Quoted in Taviani, LXIII.

9. Quoted in Eugene Lintilhac, Lesage (Paris, 1893), 128.

10. Gustave Attinger, L'esprit de la Commedia dell'arte dans le Théâtre Français (Publications de la Société d'Histoire du Théâtre, Librairie Théâtrale, 3, Rue de Marivaux, Paris, A la Baconnière, Neuchatel (Suisse) 1950), 165-212.

11. H. Kindermann, vol.IV, 76ff.

12. Quoted in Oskar Klinger, Die Comédie-Italienne in Paris nach der Sammlung von Gherardi (Strassburg, 1902), 177.

13. Quoted in Lintilhac, 130.

14. Mrs. Le Sage and D'Orneval, Le Théâtre de la Foire ou l'Opéra comique (Amsterdam, 1722-31, 6 vols).

15. Horst Steinmetz, Der Harlekin. Seine Rolle in der deutschen Komödientheorie und—dichtung des 18. Jahrhunderts (Groningen, Wolters, 1965), 5ff.

16. Rue Quincampoix in Paris was the bankers' quarter where trading in the shares of the Louisiana and Mississippi Companies took place. It was also the nickname of a coffee house in Kalverstraat, Amsterdam, likewise a centre of this share trade.