The Arlecchino and Three English Tinkers

The Arlecchino and Three English Tinkers Nina daVinci Nichols In the certainty that he towered above his time, traditional criticism tends to deny that Shakespeare also was of his time, one in which Italian theater had been flourishing for nearlya century before London's first theaters were built. To the contrary, however, as Harry Levin points out, Shakespeare "was not less but more responsive than others to the currents ofhis age.... He had achieved them by using the same materials and techniques that they [the Italians] did and can be most fully understood in the light of conditions they shared."1 In a spirit of inquiry about such shared conditions and theatrical cross-currents from approximately 1590 to 1625, 1 consider the likelihood that the Arlecchino, star ofcommedia dell'arte, served as godfather to several English player-fools, from Shakespeare's drunken tinker Christopher Sly, to his singing tinker Autolycus, to Chapman's riddling tinker, Capriccio. Each stands in a dappled shadow of Italy's nimble impersonator and each excites a consciousness of fooling as deeply antiauthoritarian. Whether or not an Arlecchino ever visited England, he seems to glimmer like a sprite in these characters, whose respective works bear other signs of Italian appropriation —a pivotal reason for my choosing to examine them. To position my argument theoretically: theArlecchino oícommedia synthesizes several traditions about fools in folklore, myth, medieval drama, and sixteenth-century styles of playing, both in theaters and on the piazze. These wide-ranging antecedents, many with near parallels in England and Europe, add to the probabilitythat reports ofanArlecchino usually, unknowingly, refer to the archetypal impersonator who is liminal , transformational, and without apropriapersona. He becomes a character onlywhen in a particular role. Even then, to the extent that fooling and role-playing always pull against the grain ofromantic plot and character , fools are appositional outsiders, perched at the edge of a drama 145 146Comparative Drama and more accurately defined in theatrical rather than representational terms. The archetypal fool might present himself to the playwright's imagination as a sketch, a ghost, a template, so to speak, as insubstantial as fools by their own report, capricious nothings. Some such concept reputedly inspired Moliere, Gozzi, Goldoni, Marivaux, and Pirandello— and I propose, inferentially, may well have inspired Shakespeare and his contemporaries.2 Additionally, certain kinds of fools seem to be as thoroughly integrated into comic situations or theatrical strategies as borrowed literary texts are in a finished work. Just as a pastoral like Guarini's much translated IlPastorFido was reinvented in Italyand flourished in Shakespeare's late plays, so some roles travel with a particular form. Critics have noticed such resemblances as "intertextuality," referring to a hypothetical descent ofstrategies or situations from a common ancestral text. Analogously ,Arlecchino would be a"text" composed oftheatrical and historical legacies, traits, styles, actions, and emblematic signs called upon by performance ofa role. One action repeated in scenari with anArlecchino, for instance, strongly suggests that either he or one ofhis near ancestors appeared in the earliest known Dialogue in commedia style (1568), almost a scenario, performed as the entertainment at a wedding feast and illustrated on the walls ofTrausnitz castle.3According to its description, the action involving a Zanni and a Magnifico grew out of a recognition scene dramatizingthe antitheses ofauthorityand antiauthority.The scene became standard in full scenari and crucial to romance plots that hinge on one or more mysterious identity. Shakespeare wrote both comic and tragic variations on the basic recognition scene in all but three of his plays. Finally, the theme of transformation in Renaissance comedy, romance , and masque relied for its expression on spectacle—acting, singing , dancing, sets, and staging. Comment about these and their relation to commedia draws on records and illustrations once considered idiosyncratic ratherthan authoritative evidence: diaries,playbills, broadsides, reports of performances by private persons, and like materials. I admit to guesswork about the Arlecchino who appears in these sources since he is, literally, manifested only in disguises, inversions, doubles, and a whirlwind of illusory roles assumed in the interests of transformation. Nina DaVinci Nichols147 About this, a reminder: Commedia was theater without a playwright; thus, a theater of actors; thus essentially theater about theater. Its...