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The Italian Mountebank and the Commedia dell'Arte

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Robert Henke
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Extract

The Italian mountebank of the early modern period was a figure of great power and fascination, both to Italians themselves and to English audiences via Thomas Coryate's documentary account and Ben Jonson's fictional portrayal of Scoto of Mantua in Volpone. Italian and Spanish antitheatrical clerics, prompted by San Carlo Borromeo to extend Counter-Reformation cultural critiques to the increasingly successful commedia dell'arte, were quick to identify the mountebank—an itinerant doctor/pharmacist who typically enticed potential patrons with an array of musical and theatrical entertainments—with the professional actor, who also performed for money in Italian piazzas. Without the moral animus of the post-Tridentine critics, late twentieth-century theatre historians have reassociated the mountebank and the actor, seeing in the former's capacity to sell theatrical entertainment anywhere and anytime (independent of the religious or civic festival) a harbinger of the professional commedia dell'arte, which had to develop means of economic self-support that were independent of traditional courtly patronage. Arte actors seem to have been aware of their perceived kinship with itinerant quacks; at the turn of the century, Giovanni Gabrielli performed a routine involving trunks and vases of the kind used by mountebanks, his own sons turning out to be the “vases.” But culturally ambitious actor-writers, who in the early seventeenth century began to counter antitheatrical attacks with apologies for the moral integrity and the technical sophistication of the new theatre, sharply differentiated themselves from the charlatans. If the conventionality of their moral defenses often hindered them from saying what comedy was, they could at least say what it was not, and it was not quackery.

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Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , November 1997 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1997

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References

1. Coryate, Thomas, Coryate's Crudities (1611; Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905), 1:409–412Google Scholar.

2. For recent discussions of the mountebank as a precursor of the arte actor, see Tessari, Roberto, La Commedia dell'Arte. La maschera e l'ombra (Milan: Mursia, 1981), 31—47Google Scholar, and Richards, Kenneth and Richards, Laura, The Commedia dell'Arte: A Documentary History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 16—17Google Scholar. For the new independence of the commedia dell'arte from calendrical festivals, see Ferrone, Siro, “La vendita del teatro: Tipologie Europee tra Cinque e Seicento,” in The Commedia dell'Arte from the Renaissance to Dario Fo: The Italian Origins of European Theatre, ed. Caims, Christopher (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), 37Google Scholar.

3. The anecdote, filtered through oral legend but probably not without historical basis, is recounted by Bartoli, Francesco in Notizie istoriche de'comici italiani (1781—82; Bologna: Amaldo Fomi, 1978), 1: 246—247Google Scholar.

4. In a letter to Don Pedro Enriquez, the Governor of Milan, Isabella Andreini alerted him that “those who mount benches in the public piazza perform comedies and thus ruin them, and so I beseech you to write to the Duke asking him not to allow [the mountebanks] to perform comedies.” Quoted in Tessari, La Commedia dell'Arte, 63. This and other translations from the Italian, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

5. Barbieri himself admits this in his treatise. See Barbieri, Nicolò, La supplica discorso famigliare a quelli che trattano de'comici, ed. Taviani, Ferdinando (Milan: II Polifilo, 1971), 126Google Scholar.

6. For a study of neofeudalism in sixteenth-century Italy and other agricultural changes in the period, see De Maddalena, Aldo, “Il mondo rurale italiano nel Cinque e nel Seicento,” Rivista storia italiana 76 (1964): 349—426Google Scholar.

7. For the various forces behind the rise of vagabondage in the fifteenth century, see Fanfani, Amintore, Storia del lavoro in Italia dalla fine del secolo XV agli inizi del XVII (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1943), 135—143Google Scholar.

8. Fanfani, 135.

9. Famous Venetian buffoni like Zuan Polo performed and wrote in stylized parodies of Bergamask, Slovenian, Greek, and German immigrants attempting to speak the Venetian dialect.

10. In addition to Giacomo Franco's 1609 engraving of Venetian mountebanks (Figure 1), see Tommaso Garzoni's lively account of theatrical activity in St. Mark's Square in La piazza universale ditutte le professioni del mondo, e nobili ed ignobili (Venice, 1585), excerpted in Marotti, Ferruccio and Romei, Giovanna, La Commedia dell'Arte e la società barocca. La professione del teatro (Rome: Bulzoni, 1991), 15—19Google Scholar.

11. A 1609 supplication to the Grand Duke of Tuscany explicitly identifies mountebanks with vagabonds (see Appendix, Document E).

12. Marotti and Romei, 14.

13. I cite from the translation of Fauno, Lucio, Roma ristaurata et Italia illustrata (Venice, 1548), 116VGoogle Scholar. For an etymological discussion of some of these terms, see Migliorini, Bruno, “Cerretano e Ciarlatano,” in Saggi Linguistici (Florence, Le Monnier, 1957), 272–277Google Scholar.

14. See Fumi, Luigi, Eretici e ribelli nell'Umbria (Todi: Atanòr, 1916)Google Scholar.

15. The most thorough treatment of the cerretano figure, which includes the Pini and Frianoro texts mentioned below, as well as several other medieval and Renaissance texts relating to vagabondage, is that of Camporesi, Piero, Il libro dei vagabondi (Turin: Einaudi, 1973)Google Scholar. Camporesi's study is extremely useful, although it tends to treat literary texts on vagabondage too literally. See also the discussion of Tessari, 37—41.

16. Camporesi, 124. It is difficult here to separate fact from fiction because many accounts of these mendicants purport to offer a documentary mirror for the purpose of correcting vice but reveal their legendary or literary quality by the fact that so many details repeat themselves from text to text. (The “cony-catching” literature of Elizabethan England presents the same interpretive difficulties.) Frianoro's Il vagabondo, for example (first printed in 1621), which purports to be an original work, turns out to be practically an exact translation of Teseo Pini's Speculum Cerretorum (c. 1484—86). But the “fact/fiction” dichotomy breaks down when one examines how actual itinerant performers shrewdly exploited their legendary image. It would be as wrong to claim that the cerretano figure is wholly spun out of literary cloth as to say that Pini and Frianoro's works exactly record social history. Extant accounts of these figures include actual court records, and sharp rises in vagabondage have often generated figures like the cerretano. For a balanced assessment of the historical reliability of these and other similar texts, see Burke, Peter, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 63—75Google Scholar. Pini's work is in Camporesi, 3—77; Frianoro's is also in Camporesi, 93—165.

17. See, for example, “Nota di parole e frasi furbesche di mano di Luigi Pulci” in Camporesi, 179—84.

18. Glissenti, Fabio, “Delle astuzie de 'mendicanti, pitocchi e forfanti, e come sono scaltriti nell'esercizio loro, e come simulando vanno ingannando il mondo,” in Discorsi morali contro il dispiacer del morire detto athanatophilia (Venice, Domenico Farri, 1596), 83rGoogle Scholar. In this dialogue (81r—84r), the mendicant minutely explains his various techniques of deception. One of Scoto's rivals accuses him of galley service (2.2.42—46) All Volpone citations refer to Johnson, Ben, Volpone, ed. Brockbank, Philip (New York: Norton, 1968)Google Scholar.

19. Camporesi, 39.

20. Camporesi, 53.

21. Coryate, 1: 411–12.

22. The misery-to-deliverance arc of the tooth-pulling farce commonly performed by the mountebanks can similarly be viewed as the staging and overcoming of pain, which places the charlatans in the context of the original cerretano tradition. See the dramatization of a tooth-pulling scene between a charlatan and a zanni in the sixteenth-century song of “Maestro Giorgio,” collected in Pandolfi, Vito, ed., La commedia dell'arte. Storia e testo (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), 1: 127–130Google Scholar.

23. Tessari discusses the transition from a “faith” to a “buy-sell” relationship between performer and audience. See La Commedia dell'Arte, 41.

24. From Garzoni, quoted from Marotti and Romei, 17–18. I use a translation of Garzoni excerpts made by Anne Goodrich Heck. This translation, along with the mountebank documents included in the appendix to this article, will be included in an anthology of primary commedia dell'arte documents that I am editing with Siro Ferrone.

25. For the multiple sensory avenues of commedia dell'arte entertainment, and the Church's anxious reaction to this, see my “Toward Reconstructing the Audiences of the Commedia dell'Arte,” Études Théâtrales / Essays in Theatre 15 (1997): 207–220Google Scholar.

26. So Garzoni describes a piazza entertainer: “From the other part of the piazza the Milanese, wearing a velvet cap with a white guelf feather on this head and dressed like a noble lord, plays the part of a lover with Gradello.” I cite from Marotti and Romei, 16.

27. For the context of Franco's engravings, and the argument that they served a documentary function, see Zorzi, Ludovico, “Spettacoli popolari veneziani del tardo Cinquecento,” in L'attore, la Commedia, il drammaturgo (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), 172–182Google Scholar.

28. Coryate, 1: 411.

29. I cite from Aretino, Pietro, Lettere, ed. Ortolani, Sergio (Turin: Einaudi, 1945), 168Google Scholar.

30. Pandolfi, 1: 124.

31. See Benedicenti, Alberico, Malati, medici e farmacisti: Storia dei rimedi traverso i secoli e delle teorie che ne spiegono l'azione sull'organismo (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1925), 2: 1021Google Scholar.

32. This carnival song is collected in Singleton, Charles, ed., Canti carnascialeschi del rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1936), 191–192Google Scholar.

33. Machiavelli, Niccolò, Il teatro e tutti gli scritti letterari, ed. Gaeta, F. (Milan: 1965), 338Google Scholar.

34. Scoto's small troupe does not include women, but there is an undercurrent of sexual thrill in his erotically driven performance that reflects Italian practice. Nano and Mosca's song promises that Scoto's oil will help its user “Do the act, your mistress pleases” (2.2.202)and Scoto claims that the powder he amorously offers to Celia once kept Venus perpetually young and beautiful (2.2.237–39).

35. Quoted but not documented by Corsini, Andrea, Medici ciarlatani e ciarlatani medici (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1922), 63Google Scholar. I have not been able to find this license in the Florence state archives. Other licenses, including the one translated in my Appendix, Document F, are transcribed by Corsini, but almost never with archival references. For more about the licensing of cantinbanchi by university and guild authorities in this period, see Corsini, 61—66. On the same date, Pagolo was also inscribed in the matriculation registers for the Arte dei Medici e Speziali as a “Cantimbanco e Ciurmatore.” See Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Arte dei Medici e Speziali, 13, c.175v.

36. Molinari, Cesare, ed. Pier Maria Cecchini. Un commediante e il suo mestiere (Ferrara: Italo Bovolenta, 1983), 9–10Google Scholar.

37. For assistance in the State Archives of Florence, my thanks go to the extremely helpful staff, and especially to the generous and magisterial help of Gino Corti.

38. Molinari, 9.

39. ASF, Otto di Balia del Principato, 2311, c.279. During the republican period, the Otto di Balia held real political power, but by the time of the medicean principate it lost all of its former political functions and became a penal tribunal.

40. For Talavino, the 1609 license extended an earlier license granted in 1603; Ferrante's 1609 license renewed an earlier 1607 permit.

41. See ASF, Otto di Balia del Principato, 232, c.115.

42. In this supervisory office, Martinelli was preceded by Angeloni, Filippo, decreed “superior” of the cantimbanchi on February 3, 1588Google Scholar. Martinelli was succeeded by his sons with a 13 September 1639 decree. See D'Ancona, Alessandro, Origini del teatro italiano (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1891), 2: 474Google Scholar.

43. The Collegio Medico of Venice ruled on the formation of the teriaca until May 1797. See Corsini, 35.

44. This short treatise is appended to Melichio, Giorgio, Avvertimenti nelle composizioni de' medicamenti per uso della spetiaria, ed. Stecchini, Alberto (1595; Venice, 1660), 332–343Google Scholar. Citation refers to page 341.

45. Melichio. 68

46. From 1441 on, a Venetian law prescribed burning false teriaca in the Rialto. See Corsini, 36.

47. Battista Guarini makes this comparison in the course of his extended theoretical defense of the genre of tragicomedy. I cite from Il verato ovvero difesa di quanto ha scritto Messer Jason Denores contra le tragicommedie, e le pastorali, in un suo discorso di poesia, collected in Delle Opere del cavalier Battista Guarini, ed. Tumermani, Giovanni Alberto (Verona, 1738), 2: 249Google Scholar.

48. Scoto praises “this blessed unguento, this rare extraction, that hath only power to disperse all malignant humours, that proceed, either of hot, cold, moist, or windy causes” (2.2.94—96).

49. Even Maestro Giorgio, in the popular piazza song mentioned above, cites various classical authorities for his medicaments: Galen, Avicenna, and Macronius. See Pandolfi, 1: 126

50. Ferrone, Siro, Attori mercanti corsari: La commedia dell'arte in Europa tra Cinque e Seicento (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), 52Google Scholar.

51. Caro, Annibal, La Ficheide del padre siceo (1537; Baldacio, 1787), A4rGoogle Scholar.

52. For Garzoni's account, see Marotti and Romei, 15–17.

53. Il primo libro delle metamorphosi was printed in Venice, 1555. Rime Diverse di molti excellenti autori was printed in Venice, “ad istantia d'Alberto di Gratia detto il Toscano,” n.d. For the publishing and literary marketing of Italian charlatans and the life of Coppa, see Bongi, Salvatore, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari da Trino di Monferrato Stampatore in Venezia Descritti ed Illustrati (Rome, 1895), 2: 26–36Google Scholar.

54. The full title was Restauro Amoroso, dove si contiene una bellissima lettera amorosa. Consonetti a piu propositi; et un capitolo in laude delle bellezze d'una donna. Con la ricercata di Venere per la perdita di Cupido, ad istanza di Maffeo Tagieti detto il Fortunato (Camerino, 1524)Google Scholar. Garzoni's “Cieco da Forli” was either Cristofano de' Sordi or Cristofano Scanello—the latter the author of Storie sopra la morte di Rodomonte (Fermo, 1562Google Scholar) and Rime Spirituali (Ferrara, 1579)Google Scholar.

55. Ariosto, Lodovico, Herbolato di M. Lodovico Ariosto, nel quale figura Maestro Antonio Faentino, che parla della nobiltà dell'huomo, et dell'arte della Medicina cosa nón meno utile che dilettevole, con alquante stanze del medesimo novamente stampate (Venice, 1545)Google Scholar. The short book begins with a dedicatory letter from Coppa to Catherina Barbaro.

56. Ariosto, B2v–B3r.

57. Parker, Brian, “Jonson's Venice,” in Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance, ed. Mulryne, J.R. and Shewring, Margeret (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 95—112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58. Ong, Walter J., “Oral Residue in Tudor Prose Style,” PMLA 80 (1965): 145—154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Scala, Flaminio, Il teatro delle favole rappresentative, ed. Marotti, Ferruccio (Milan: II Polifilo, 1976)Google Scholar.

60. For a cultural study of insults in early modern Italy, see Burke, 95—109.

61. See Greene, Thomas, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 92Google Scholar.

62. After Celia has responded favorably to Scoto by throwing down her handkerchief from the window, Corvino beats Scoto away and exclaims, “No house but mine to make your scene / Signior Flaminio, will you down, sir? down? / What is my wife your Franciscina, sir? / . . ere tomorrow I shall be new christened, / And called the Pantalone di Besogniosi, / About the town” (2.3.2—4,7–8).