Skip to main content Skip to Search Box

Definition: Commedia dell'arte (Italian, ‘comedy of art’) from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

A type of popular theatre that originated in Italy and flourished throughout Europe in the 16th–18th centuries. It featured a number of stock characters, e.g. harlequin, Pantaloon (see pantaloons) and scaramouch, who improvised around any of a set of stock situations, usually involving a complicated romantic liaison. The character of Punch (see punch and judy) derives from commedia dell'arte.


commedia dell’arte.

From The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting
An eighteenth-century term, coined by Carlo Goldoni, used to designate Italian professional theatre from its origins in mid-sixteenth-century Italy to its variegated incarnations in France, Russia, and elsewhere. Italian actors were best known for a system of improvisation based on modular plot outlines, structured but flexible character networks, elastic dialogue structures, and fertile wells of improvised verbal creation that drew heavily on both oral traditions and literature. Two sharply differing, but mutually influencing modes of acting characterized early Italian comici : the presentational, grotesque style of the mask-bearing actors – particularly the zanni (servants) – and the emerging mimetic, or representational, acting style introduced in the 1560s by the lovers ( innamorati ), who did not wear masks but used their eyes, facial expressions, and glances in ways that audiences found sophisticated and moving. The figure of the zanni , especially the so-called secondo zanni who…
254 results
A genre of improvised theater parodying Venetian and northern Italian society, arising in the early 16th century, and flourishing throughout Europe until the early 18th. Its stock characters included lecherous Pantalone, gullible Dottore Graziano, boastful Capitano or Scaramuccia, the ingenue…
| 130 words
Key concepts:
| 46 words
Key concepts:
Harlequin, a brightly-clad character in the Italian commedia dell’ arte, has a murky history. He seems to have originated in a mythical figure known in Old French as Herlequin or Hellequin , who was the leader of a ghostly troop of horsemen who rode across the sky at night. And Herlequin could well…
| 166 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Pantomime

From The Harvard Dictionary of Music
The portrayal of emotions and actions or the narration of an event by means of gesture and body movements. The technique of pantomime may be incorporated into opera or ballet. The character Vespone in Pergolesi's La serva padrona is a pantomime role, as is the title character of Auber's La muette de…
| 164 words
Key concepts:
Self Portrait of the Artist, with a Cittern
The date of the portrait (13 April 1674) was three days before van Mieris's 39th birthday. The identity of the sitter is confirmed by a drawing which is signed and dated 1667 (London, British Museum). The artist wears an archaic type of dress based on theatrical costumes of the…
| 101 words , 1 image
Key concepts:

Full text Article Isabella

From Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context
This name is given to the principal female role in Measure , that of the novice who uses her forensic skill against the magistrate Angelo while striving to save her brother from execution. However, while the name is also that of an early sixteenth-century nun perhaps from Shakespeare’s family, it…
| 121 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article pants

From Word Origins
Pants is short for pantaloons , a term used since the 17th century for men's nether garments. The word originated in the name of a character in the old Italian commedia dell’ arte, Pantalone , a silly old man with thin legs who encased them in tight trousers. English took the word over via French…
| 110 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article A Comedy of Betrothal

From Encyclopedia of Renaissance Literature
Also known as: Tsahut Badihutha de-quiddushin 1560 Work Author: Leone de’ Sommi The earliest surviving drama in the Hebrew language, Sommi's five-act prose drama draws its character types from the Italian commedia dell’ arte and its plot from a postbiblical, oral, rabbinical narrative from the…
| 347 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Rame, Franca

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
Italian actress, director and author. A member of the famous Rame family of professional comedians, Franca toured northern Italy with them as a child. Her family had been associated with itinerant theatre since the commedia dell’ arte of the 17th century and had developed highly flexible techniques…
| 304 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article MIME

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
(Gr., "imitation"). In the cl. sense of the term, a type of drama in which players rely mainly on gestures to tell a story. Found in ancient Greece and Rome, the mime probably arose, as its name implies, from the natural impulse to imitate persons or scenes from daily life. As a literary genre, …
| 479 words
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources