Your Status: Logged out Log in

Commedia dell'Arte  

Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Fri Jan 28 2005

Page Preview
Preview
Previous 1 of 2 Next

On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:

Commedia dell'Arte Commedia dell'Arte, Italian for "comedy of art", was an Italian theatrical form that flourished throughout Europe from the 16th through the 18th century. Outside Italy, the form had its greatest success in France, where it became the Comedie-Italienne. In England, elements from it were naturalised in the halequinade in pantomime and in the Punch-and-Judy show, a puppet play involving the commedia dell'arte character Punch. The commedia dell'arte was a form of popular theatre that emphasised ensemble acting; its improvisations were set in a firm framework of masks and stock situations, and its plot were frequently borrowed from the classical literary tradition of the commedia erudite, or literary drama. Professional players who specialised in one role developed an unmatched comic acting technique, which contributed to the popularity of the itinerant commedia troupes that travelled throughout Europe. Many attempts have been made to find the form's origins from the classical Atellan play...

To see the full version of this document, and 144,904 others

Register Now