High School Thesis - The Theatrical Comedy: from the origins to our days

The theatrical comedy sinks its roots in the Greek culture of the VI century B.C. with

the comedic poetry. The constitutive elements which started the comedy are

basically two: the phallophoria and the phialic farce; there are still doubts about the

time, the ways and the environment of their fusion. From the term χωμωδία (comedy)

were given two etymologies: from χωμη (village), which characterizes the comedy with

rural origins; from χωμος, a word which indicates: a noisy company of drunk men; a

noisy spree spread by the symposium (buffet). In this second meaning, the word

seems referable to an Attic Dionysian festival, merry and singing, or a moment of it.

The essential core of this celebration was, in the beginning of the VI century, the

phallophoria, that is the procession of the phallus (symbol of generation and

fertility), which dancing men girded with ivy brought around the countryside, in a

specific moment of the year and in an atmosphere of licentious intoxication. The

phallophores, often masked with animal costumes (Satyrs), were the members of the

chorus of the licentious χωμος and they sang Dionysus, or allegorical figures of his

entourage. In Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s opinion, all that is also the basis of the

birth of the theatrical tragedy, opposed to the comedy one. Birth caused by the union

of: Apollonian spirit, impulse of serenity, balance and escape from the becoming;

Dionysian spirit, impulse of chaos, vital strength and participation to the becoming. At

first, the two spirits were living separated and opposite. Then they harmonized,

giving, first, the representation of the world and, second, the orgiastic fury. The

phallophoria gave, both to the Attic tragedy and the Attic comedy, the lyrical

element: the chorus. It is probable that the concomitance of the phallic parties with

the time of the harvest, characterized from the trade of joking insults between

farmers, could have favored the insertion of the mockery in the ritual songs. Thus

the joking mockery of the audience could insert itself in the phallophoria, beside the

invite to make way to the procession and to the hymn of invocation or propitiatory. In

the theatrical comedy of the V century, are present exactly the essential elements

of the phallophoria: the hymn and the mockery. The dramatic element (the actors and

the dialogue) derives instead from the phialic farce, that is from the improvised

scenes of the fliaci or fools. The phialic farce is to be considered an elementary

theatrical action which principally points to ridiculous physical characteristics of the

characters, to sometimes unrelated mockery, to feasts and beatings, to curious daily

cases; even the divine world is assumed, with innocent irreverence, as occasion of a

laugh more release than malicious. It is a popular farce, not only as it is born and

developed in the countryside, but as it is expression of social layers which in the

laugh find retaliation and an outlet now against a tyrannic and overbearing master,

now against a culture not deprived of claims and in every case suspect towards the

common sense, even against a religion inevitably felt like expression and protection of

who detains richness and power. Even if in the whole Greece there are irregular

actors, nomads, improvisers, the majority pantomimes, characterized in the disguise

of grotesque prominences of the belly and the posterior, but also of the male gender,

in Aristotle’s opinion, the origin of the real phialic farce should be searched in

Megara. The Attic comedy contaminated the Megarian dramatic element with the

Attic lyrical one. Aristotle himself attributes to the Sicilian Epicharmus and to a few

others, the merit of creating the comedic plot, that is of uniting different farcical

scenes around a dramatic thread. Essential element of Epicharmus’ comedy seems to

be the literary and religious parody and the contacts with the Satyric drama. But the

most important source of the comedic attitude of Epicharmus is the adhesion to

reality, which had already inspired the farcical phialic caricatures. The mythical

parody draws from the typically popular gusto of disguising sacred and profane on one

side, on the other make spectacular that sense of grotesque contrast, of the

mockery, of the wit which circulates in the daily comedy: the arrogance of an athlete,

the seriousness of a “superman”, the ugliness of a grungy old lady, the irruption in a

house of ill reputation, the breaking of the pots of a potter or the bickering and the

slaps between the father farmer and the son in love with the city offer immediate

notes to a painting of environment and characters who will pass from the typology of

the popular farce to that literary of the “new comedy”; thus is born the character of

the Attic comedy. The history of the Attic comedy must be divided in periods: from

the original “ancient comedy” opposite to the “new” one, there is a phase of transition

called “middle comedy”. The main characteristics of the “ancient comedy” were: the

presence of the chorus with its fanciful disguises; the scheme of the structure of

the tragedy, enriched by the parabasis; the aggressiveness of the personal satire and

the simplicity of the plot. The most typical part of the comedy is the parabasis, that

is that in which the chorus completely breaks the scenic fiction, removes the disguise

and proceeds towards the proscenium to talk directly to the audience. To the

parabasis, the author entrusts, often in a lively polemic form, the enunciation of their

feelings and their points of view; the parabasis consists of seven parts. The personal

and political satire were allowed for a long time, thanks to the unprejudiced liberal

mentality, even if, in Athene, behind the alleged censorship law on the work of art,

were promulgated repressive laws up to provoke the disappearance of the parabasis

and of the lyrical element of the comedy. They stayed, as foundation, the intrusion of

the sustained language or of those foreign, the gusto of misunderstandings, of

polysenses, and of all those lexical devices which are able to provoke the laugh. The

evolution of comedy makes it already difficult to distinguish between “middle” and

“ancient comedy”, but it’s even more difficult to define the differences between

“middle” and “new comedy”. In reality, from the last works of Aristophanes ‘til the

latest playwrights of the III century and their Roman imitators, it is observed a

substantial continuity. As essential characteristics of the “new comedy”, are

recognized: the undisputed prevail of a complex plot, mostly romantically themed; the

absence of political and personal satire and the delineation of types or characters;

the disappearance of the mythological parody and the bourgeois attitude of the

environments and the characters; the disappearance of the chorus, reduced to sing

interludes; the fixed exterior scene and the refinement of masks and costumes.

These characteristics establish themselves for economical and political reasons, too,

from the middle of the IV century, so that it is impossible to assign dates of birth to

the new phase of the comedy. The fundamental and almost constant reason of the

post-Aristophanes theatrical comedy is the fight between the young and old people

for love (rivalry for the same woman or contrast between the right to love of the

children and the rigorous narrow-mindedness of their parents). The victory of the

young, who embodies an eternal law of life, rewards the commitment of heart and the

shrewdness of the servants. The human types are very abstract and conventional: the

parents are usually old, frigid, greedy, irascible, sometimes libertine and fool; the

children are dissipated, unprejudiced, ardent, blunt and nice; the servants are

cunning, tricksters, daring, arrogant and foul-mouthed; and there are usually

parasites, cooks, procurers and arrogant soldiers. Among the women there are hags

and middle-aged, but also indulgent mothers, virtuous brides, violated virgins, courtesans

and greedy and refined flutists. This the bourgeois world which camps on the scenes

with daily problems and without heroisms and with the ethical and psychological

sensibility of a new age: the lyrical abandonments and the sudden rise of fantasy

disappear; the grotesque comedy mitigates and leaves the place to a subtle irony and

sometimes to a thoughtful seriousness which indulges sententiousness, analyses

psychology with subtle penetration, affirms new positive values and composes the

events with rationality. While the phialic farce, Epicharmus’ comedy and the mime

were spreading from Greece to Magna Graecia (Sicily), the primitive Italic people was

dedicating themselves to satirical, comedic, festive and mordant displays of a sharp

comedic realism which Horace called Italum Acetum, almost to mean that these

popular displays could have had some references to those of Magna Graecia; these

first displays were called Fescennine Verses, Atellan Farces, Satura (Satire), Mimes.

The denominations were different, the coloring of the scene was varied, but it was

unique the peasantness of the costume, the coarseness of the countryside-esque

expression, the tendency to the caricature, the laugh and the funny comedy, in short,

the popular farcical intonation. Even when these manifestations became “literature”,

they will preserve the original print of their rural and rube nature. Thus the

Fescennine Verses prove to be rustic songs improvised by the farmers, during the

harvest and the countryside parties; the Atellan Farces, very close to the Fescennine

Verses, maintain, however, a dramatic contained and disciplined setting; while the

Satura draws at the tasteful and expressive realism; as for the Mime, we find

ourselves in some kind of farce with a grotesque and expressive language of the

common people accompanied with lively and usually grotesque gestures, meant to

grasp and imitate animal sounds, natural phenomenons and temporary scenes of human

life. Therefore, when Livius Andronicus and his successors started to translate and

adapt the Greek comedies for the Roman audience, there were already different

well-developed dramatic genres. These forms of popular comedy had many points of

contact: they all presented situations of easy humor, suitable for every audience,

they parodied serious themes, they presented the characters in a forced and

ridiculous light, they gave more importance to liveliness and to impertinence than to

the coherence of the action, they didn’t neglect the obscene and indecent situations.

Common in all these forms was the relevance of the song and the dance. But we must

be very cautious and don’t get an idea too elevated of this primitive popular comedy.

It was crude, and it was easily substituted by the superior comedy imported from

Greece. We might ask ourselves if these preliterary forms had some influence on the

Roman comedy, especially in the two main forms developed in Rome: the Fabula

Palliata, that is the one remade on the Greek prints, so said from the pallium, the

wide cloak worn by the Greek actors and opposed to the Roman toga; and the Fabula

Togata, of national subject, where the actors worn the toga, common cloth of the

Roman people. This last one was divided in: Trabeata, when the characters were

knights dressed of trabea, purpura cloak, of aristocratic intonation; Tabernaria, when

the lowly common people was on the stage, the life of the taverns. The answer is that

the structure was certainly modeled after that of the Greek drama: a prologue, that

is the background; an epilogue, that is the conclusion; the body of the comedy was

made of singing parts with musical accompaniment (Cantica) and of dialogues

(Deverbia). It didn’t present the division in acts: the distribution was the work of

later grammarians. In the ancient comedies, even the captions appeared, short

informative news regarding the presentation of the comedy, containing the title of

the work, the names of the author, the actors and the composer, the celebratory

occasions and the result of the musical execution. Often the same actor played

different roles, even feminine, by using the mask; distinctive characters of the

costume were the Socci, some kind of shoes which were used to make the scenic

fiction more realistic. Anyway, we must recognize to the Roman comedy some kind of

originality. Although many comedies were lost, we extract an opinion which gives us a

false idea of the Roman originality, since they highlight how the Romans are

dependent from the Greece for the plots, the environments, the themes and the

characters. The tradition of the Roman theatrical comedy extends itself, albeit

partly, even to the Middle Ages. In Italy, at the end of the 1300s and in the 1400s,

the theatrical comedy developed in the academical cities. The authors were not

professional playwrights, but students who dabbled in theater. They wrote comedies

in Latin of comical-satirical tone inspired by Plautus and Terentius, who had the merit

of making the plots more farcical and the characters more laughable and grotesque,

of developing the parts destined to the song and the dance, of adding references to

the Roman life, of increasing the quantity and the vulgarity of the jokes, of

introducing more emotion, more surprise and the use of the double plot, of developing

the psychology and the structure of the characters. The subjects are the usual ones

for the comedy: cunning servants who deceive their stupid masters, love between the

young ones, pranks and jokes, to which they added the picture of the goliardic world

of that age. Thanks to the work of these young humanists, most of which will become

important men (Enea Silvio Piccolomini will become Pope Pius II), the comedy started

to spread in the main Italian courts. Characteristic of the second half of the 1400s,

is a repertoire of profane theater represented at the courts often in occasion of

particular recurrences like parties, weddings and celebrations. The subjects were

fabulous and of mythological inspiration. Those arguments allowed the authors,

intellectuals of the court, to easily evoke the ancient times, avoiding the comparison

with the classic playwrights; furthermore, the mythological subjects gave way to the

authors to institute laudatory comparisons between Gods and the rich princes who

commissioned the works. The 1500s was a century in which the classic comedies

were recovered with the recitation of Greek and Latin texts in original language, but

there were also produced new comedies, and so it was born a theatrical comedy

managed directly by professional actors: the Commedia dell’Arte (comedy of the

art). In a century full of cultural ferments, the Commedia was born from the

fusion of two factors: the humanistic recovery of the ancient theater and the

comedic tradition made of popular parties and representations which was extended

during the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance, such tradition was literarized and

elevated to show, without losing of freshness. Then we must add a further influence,

constituted by the heritage of the Novella (short story) in Giovanni Boccaccio style, in

which the authors of comedies found a wide repertoire of characters, plots and

comedic scenes of easy theatrical transposition, which reflected the typicality of the

urban and middle-class world represented in the comedies. The sixteenth century

comedy wasn’t forced to develop in a forest of theoretical norms: the authors show

respect for the unities of place and time, but not for the one of action. Even the

attempts of writing comedies in verses didn’t reach a particular success. Therefore,

between the end of the 1400s and the 1500s, we could say that it was born, in Italy,

the modern theatrical comedy. In the not-so-rich picture of the Italian theater of

the 1600s, the Commedia dell’Arte occupies a place of particular relevance. It is

distinguished by some very particular characters, which invest every aspect of the

theatrical life with a breath of novelty often chaotic, but vivifier. The primal

character, the most essential, from which spring all the others, resides in the new

nature and qualification of the actor, not a simple dabbler anymore, but professional,

prepared in its craft. The professionalism of the comedians has, as an immediate

consequence, the constitution of companies, which unite and organize the actors, and

they’re itinerant, giving representations of always excellent workmanship, as the

experience increases, and, in the time of a few years, it is created a tradition very

rich and vary of acting, of mimicry, of spectacularity. So it was born the figure of the

manager, who cures not only the administrative life of the company, but they also

take care of the perfection of the acting and the texts; there is also the figure of

the poet of the company, who follows the comedians in their wanderings and provides

them ideas, notes, canovacci (scenarios), plots, written texts, often in an immediate

relationship with the attitudes and the favourite roles of the actor. It’s not rare the

figure of the author-actor endowed with inspiration and genius, especially in the

invention of comedic cases different from the traditional ones. The Commedia

dell’Arte is undoubtedly a type of theatrical representation dominated by the figure

and the ability of the actor. The written text has little importance, so that the

regular comedy was soon abandoned, unfit, with its formalism and the rigidity of its

structures, to hold the weight of this bursting vitality, of this extraordinary

movement imprinted by the interpreter of all this scenic game; it was created a form

of written text subordinated to the needs of the scene and the actor: the scenario.

Simple draft of a plot in the shape of a list of gestures, attitudes, situations, with an

always modifiable and precarious drafting of dialogues, quarrels, word plays, mottos,

etc.; the scenario is always ductile tool provided by the natural skills and the refined

experience of the artist. The improvisation becomes the fundamental element of the

success and the fame acquired by the histrions. It is not to be overestimated the

nature of this improvisation, since there was no comedian who didn’t have its own

personal “zibaldone”. It remains the fact that a great ability and a not only

spontaneous mastery of the scenes, could allow to the comedian to infuse in a

repeated subject an apparently eternal and almost inexhaustible vitality. The

comedian was facilitated in its task by the fact that rarely they broke a specific role,

from which, after creating it and refined it, they end up getting the name

(Beolco/Ruzzante). With the theatrical professionalism and the dissolution of the

written text, we must also place the rise of the mask, human or sociological or

literary type fixed in its fundamental characters, which has become a rigid shell in

which to pour the variety of the gesture and the invention of the language. The masks

(grotesque deformations of the plebeians) of the Commedia dell’Arte (also called

comedy of the fools) are infinite and famous: Pantalone, grumpy, greedy and lustful

old man; Dottor Balanzone, foolish counselor; the “Innamorati”, passionate and

beautiful; Corallina, Colombina and Smeraldina, cunning, malicious and noisy servants;

Capitan Spavento, boaster and braggart soldier; Scaramouche, violent and fearful

soldier; Brighella, cunning and deceiving servant; Harlequin, stupid, lazy and voracious

servant; Pulcinella, voracious, smart and lustful Neapolitan mask, with the skill of

adapt herself to the life cases and a skeptic and disenchanted philosophy of the

existence. Brighella and Harlequin are the masks of the “Zanni” (comedy of the

Zanni). In the 1700s, the Academy of Arcadia will give the start to the great reform

which will be called, after its creator, Goldonian. In fact, Carlo Goldoni had to adapt

himself to the acceptance of the way of doing of that genre which didn’t adapt itself

to the schedule of classicistic-moralistic restoration typical not of the Arcadia as an

Academy, but as expression and symbol of the tendencies and of the gusto of the

age. The absence of an author who could imprint in the work the seal of its own

culture and of its own personality; the preponderance of the less literate actors

bound to a tradition of texts, scenic inventions, languages, by now impregnated of

seventeenth century manners; the masks, not only crystallizations of characters and

of social phenomenons historically outmoded, but especially grotesque deformations

of the human: all of this made of the Commedia dell’Arte a “show” which could

interest the audience (socially differentiated) and could give its last great bursts of

flames with ingenious actors, but it couldn’t anymore interpret the needs of the

century. Therefore, the entire Arcadian eighteenth century aimed to substitute to

the freedom of the Commedia dell’Arte, the regularity of a comedy on the model of

the Italian theater of the sixteenth century, that is a comedy in which the “real”

human characters moved themselves in an invented and rationally dramatized action,

with a function of satire of the costume and with the repudiation of every

abandonment to the games and the quirks of fantasy. We need, however, to confront

the Commedia dell’Arte itself, because it was a genre by now emptied, but still full of

prestige, a shell which could be filled of new content. Goldoni, in the middle of the

1700s, proceeded with firm constancy towards a theater which, for its putting the

spotlight a daily reality caught in its fresh taste of lived life, for its exalting the

figure of the Venetian merchant, for its seriously debating the problems lived in that

age, didn’t have anything Arcadian anymore, but was enlightening without a doubt. So

it developed a theater which burnt all the remains of its derivation from the

Commedia dell’Arte: it substituted the canovaccio with a text to recite without

changes; it decreased of number and importance the masks which were later

eliminated; it removed the servants, who were the major sources of an all theatrical

comedy since the Greek “new comedy”; it swept away all those devices which made of

the theater a scenic fiction without any relation with reality; it substituted to the

abstractions typical of the classic comedy and of the Commedia dell’Arte complete

individuals characterized via their social condition. The new theatrical comedy

followed, in those years, two paths: that of the daily realism and that of sensibility.

To do this, Goldoni operated a real reform. Reform which developed via a complex

game of reactions with the actors, the audience, the rival authors and the censorship.

He devised a theater all written with the specific personality of the author; a

realistic and serious comedy which put on the stage the whole society of that age and

put on the spotlight, as a serious protagonist, the “bourgeoisie”, with its mentality, its

morality and its problems. This way of bringing the society of the time on stage, will

go on for the whole 1800s, with the themes of the middle-class world and the family

between adultery, divorce and parents-children relationships. The theater becomes

of naturalistic mold, that is, the representation had to obey to the criterion of the

verisimilitude: the events must resemble the daily life of the audience, the

psychology of the characters must reproduce that of the middle-class world, the

development of the events must proceed according to a precise temporal sequence

and respect the coherence of the bonds between cause and effect. On the

background of the verisimilitude, we must add the fantastical touch of some

sentimental and romantic element, which gives a more intense and emotional

dimension. In 1896, a comedy of Luigi Pirandello will give the start to the new

theatrical comedy of the 1900s. But the turning point year of the playwright

Pirandello compared to the novelist Pirandello is 1915. For Italy, it was a memorable

year, because it marked its entrance in World War I, after being divided in

neutralists and interventionists. The neutralists were: socialists, against a war fought

for the interests of international capitalism; Catholics, who didn’t want to antagonize

the Catholic Austria; Giovanni Giolitti’s liberals, who had predicted a long and

expensive (in money and men) war. The interventionists were: irredentists and

democrats, who thought to a Fourth War of Independence (the First was in the

international movements of 1848); liberal-conservatives, who wanted to strengthen

the international influence of Italy; nationalists, for whom the war was “the hygiene

of the world”; revolutionary syndicalists, for whom the warlike violence could help a

revolutionary action. The end of the war (1918) was very disappointing to Italy, which

had to settle for a mutilated victory, thanks to which it got Friuli Venezia Giulia and

Trentino Alto Adige. With Sardinia-Piedmont, Lombardy (1859, Second War of

Independence), Central Ducats (1860), South Kingdom (1861, Expedition of the

Thousand), Veneto (1866, Austro-Prussian War/Third War of Independence) and

Rome (1870, Franco-Prussian War/Capture of Rome), the configuration of Italy

finally became the one we know. Pirandello discovers in the theater a genre closer to

his poetics of the humor, revolutionizing the way itself of making theater. The

relationship between audience and theater becomes element of mutual

complementarity: the audience assists to the representation to see their lives

dignified, and to feel themselves gratified from their daily routine with a hint of

emotion and sentiment. So that the theater becomes a social ritual which confirms

the common sense. To it, Pirandello substitutes the humor, corrosive element which

inquires behind the order and the beautiful appearances, the oddity, the

contradictory, the chaos and the discrepancies which dominate life, called Grande

Pupazzata (Great Puppetry). It happens so a complete revolution of the tradition: the

represented events still belong to the daily, but they reveal a bizarre face which

transforms the normal in absurd; the usual social affective and familiar relationships

are turned upside down in the grotesque, that is a mix of tragic and comedic; the

normal reality suddenly becomes chaotic and incomprehensible; the scenography

starts to take surreal aspects and to become representation of scenarios of

thoughts; the communication between the characters is shattered, it doesn’t

reproduce the daily dialogue, but a convulsive overlap of messages, as if it was not

transcribed what they say, but what they think; the characters themselves lose their

psychological unit and present themselves as split, sometimes stuck in a particular

mania of theirs, other times fluctuating between multiple identities, often completely

undefinable, because their Ego is disrupted. This last element was born from the fact

that, in those years, the psychoanalysis was developing: the discovery of mental

structures made by Sigmund Freud. In the first one, the mind is divided in conscious,

the visible manifestation, and unconscious, the hidden part. The unconscious is divided

in: preconscious, where the memories are temporarily unconscious and come back

easily to the surface; repression, where the memories are stably unconscious and can

come back to the surface only with dreams, free associations and hypnosis. In the

second structure, the one which interests Pirandello, the mind is divided in: Id, the

instinctual and impulsive part; Super-Ego, the rational part built on rules; Ego, the

arbitrator who regulates the relation Id-Super-Ego-external world. The characters

are split between instinct, reason and a moderate middle way. Ultimately, Pirandello

destroys the naturalistic idea of the middle-class drama as imitation of the common

sense of reality and he substitutes the sentiment of the opposite to it. A

furthermore development of the theatrical comedy comes from 1921 to 1929, when

Pirandello writes four comedies which unify the theme of disassociation of the Ego to

the ulterior demystification of the theater as imitation, transforming the

representation itself in object of another representation: the theater in the theater

(metatheater) device, already used by Plautus, William Shakespeare, Goldoni and, in

literature, even by Petronius, Apuleius, Boccaccio and Italo Svevo. Pirandello

represents the theater itself and its problems: he brings the audience behind the

curtains of the stage in the middle of the construction of the theatrical fiction, he

reveals its deceiving nature and definitively destroys the theater of the imitation. At

the same time, the theatrical fiction becomes a realistic representation of the

fiction of the roles and the masks. Finally, in 1933, the Sicilian Pirandello meets

Eduardo De Filippo. Actor, producer and company director, he introduces themes such

craziness (real or fake) and the betrayal. An important point of his comedies is

represented by a wild comedic verve, dating back to the farcical forms of the ancient

Commedia dell’Arte, of which he didn’t share the negative vision given by the

scholars. Adopting the popular talk, he had the merit of confer to the Neapolitan

dialect the dignity of an official language, elaborating a theatrical language which

went beyond Neapolitan and Italian to become a universal language. The action and

the work of Eduardo De Filippo were decisive in order that the dialectal theater

could be finally considered a theater of art. We have the proof of this in the works

of the playwright of Oristano, Antonio Garau, who had an enormous success in

Sardinia. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the cabaret arrived in Italy, from the

French “tavern”, to point at a place in which there is a show: usually, a little and

intimate local, like a club or a café, frequented by a limited audience which can

consume food and drinks during the representation. The cabaret is a show of

entertainment led by a presenter and composed by various inroads of different

actors. To the Milanese cabaret, initially full of cultural and political satire, is

opposed the Roman cabaret, exclusively focused on entertaining the audience and

purposefully distant from intellectual implications. Now, between the end of the

1900s and the Third Millennium, the cabaret fused itself with the television, giving

life to TV shows like Colorado Café (Roman) and Zelig (Milanese bar), and cohabits

with the theatrical comedy, in which there were brought, from great actors like Aldo,

Giovanni & Giacomo (able to use the metatheater even in cinema and television), some

elements of the cabaret, like satirical monologues, modified songs and sketches

(scenes full of gags).