Hemingway’s Commedia Dell’arte Story?: “Out of Season”

Peduzzi, the drunken fishing guide in Hemingway’s short story “Out of Season,” has generated widely varying interpretations from critics and from Hemingway himself. Readers have tended to focus either on the quarreling married couple or on Peduzzi’s point of view. However, an Italian language clue within “Out of Season,” the young gentleman’s reference to Peduzzi as a “vecchio,” may integrate the story’s three characters as a modernist version of commedia dell’arte, Italian comic theater. The article examines this premise in light of Hemingway’s extensive knowledge of Italian stock characters in literature and opera.