Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell'Arte (review)

Reviews419 shrewd commentary on the ways different film directors have cut and altered the plays to suit their own cinematic purposes. Furthermore, anyone who values close attention to the specific details ofartistry in works ofart will appreciate the kinds of close readings Crowl offers, for instance, on pages 71-73. In fact, one might wish that the book offered even more of this kind of intensive analysis. To say this, however, is to risk making the same mistake with Crowl's book that has been made with some of the films he discusses—the risk oflooking a gift-horse in the mouth. Robert C. Evans Auburn University, Montgomery Robert Henke. Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell'Arte.Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress,2002.Pp. xiv + 263 + illustrations. $60.00. Robert Henke's elegant, erudite,highly readable volume dealing with the development ofItalian professional theater from 1545 to 1625 is oftremendous value to present-day scholarship for its groundbreaking treatment of a range of archival materials that have not been previously readily available to the English reader. Contending that the very nature ofthe commedia dell'arte culture owed its existence to the balance that was struck between the oral virtuosic practices of the buffoons and zanies and the literary requirements that the actors and companyleaders imported into the troupes from Renaissance dramatic textual models, Henke explores the intricate interface that took place between established performance traditions and the new literary forms and practices that came together in this foundational early modern theatrical art form. My review will draw attention to some ofthe key points he makes in cataloguing the intersection of these two traditions as they continue to produce new and exciting modes and styles of performance. To make this study accessible to the non-Italian specialist, Henke introduces some basic information about the commedia dell'arte, pointing out that the term should not be restricted only to its most generally accepted definition, which refers to the activities of the famous professional companies who came to be known for their improvised plays as well as scripted performances. Rather, he advocates expanding it to embrace the vast range of street performers and semi-professionals who continued to cross-fertilize the professional companies 420Comparative Drama throughout their existence. Having established the complexities of the larger social framework, he demonstrates the ways in which the transition from an oral to a written culture are played out in the increasing professionalization of the commedia dell'arte troupes as indicated by the kinds ofverbal and written contracts they made from their early incorporations, while in the service of noble patrons, and, finally, in their attempts to operate as full-fledged business enterprises. Chapter 2 outlines the ways in which the commedia dell'arte's improvisational rules adapted the strictly oral Homeric formulae to suit the requirements ofthe drama in a residually oral culture. Thus, for example, when the romantic plots that the actresses brought from the commedia erudite became the norm, opposite pairs of actors would improvise the dialogue to advance the action and prepare for the next entrances. Here Henke pointedly departs from Tim Fitzpatrick's contention that the actors spoke in everyday naturalistic dialogue, arguing that Italian actors constructed a "detailed and nuanced repertoire of verbal and gestural routines" (15) that they drew from "specific literary and cultural codes that could have been found in Renaissance commonplace books" (15). Above all, he stresses that the level of literary and verbal skill demonstrated by the lovers' parts easily rivals that of Shakespeare's romantic characters . Using Scala's 1611 collection of fifty scenarios, he builds profiles of the individual masks while offering useful generalizations about the versatility of each. Chapter 3 traces the myriad ways in which the predominantly dialogic commedia dell'arte adapted its use of traditional popular oral forms to reflect the growing importance that the actors accorded to rhetorical practices and their prescriptive rules for composition and delivery as evidenced by the proliferation of generici, or commonplace books, in which they collected their set speeches. So too, the growing popularity ofprinted material that both enlarged the repertory of the players and allowed them to publish themselves encouraged the dissemination and integration of oral...