Duchartre - The italian comedy: the improvisation, scenarios, lives, attributes, portraits and masks of the illustrious characters of the commedia dellarte: with a new pictorial supplement reproduced from the

TROUPE OF THE COMMEDIA DELL' ARTE

Eighteenth-century engraving. Artist unknown

THE

ITALIAN COMEDY

The Improvisation Scenarios Lives Attributes Portraits
and Masks of the Illustrious Characters
of the Commedia dell' Arte

By

PIERRE LOUIS DUCHARTRE

Authorized Translation from the French by

RANDOLPH T. WEAVER

With a New Pictorial Supplement reproduced from
the Recueil Fossard and Compositions de rhtorique

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

NEW YORK

Copyright 1966 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

This Dover edition, first published in 1966, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., in 1929. The Frontispiece and illustrations facing page 24 appeared in color in the original edition.

This edition is published by special arrangement with George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd.

This edition also contains a new Pictorial Supplement compiled from the Recueil Fossard, published by Duchartre and Van Buggenhoudt in 1928.

International Standard Book Number: 0-486-21679-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-23390

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

DUCHARTRE'S admirable study of the Italian comedy is already well known in the original to those interested in the subject, particularly in Europe, and surely it deserves the wider attention and appreciation which a version in English can provide. The present volume offers several advantages over the two French editions of La Comdie italienne, in that the author has made extensive corrections and added fresh material to the text. He has been good enough to add also twenty-six entirely new illustrations, most of which have never before been published. It is worth mentioning in passing that nine of these, and two figures which appeared in the second French edition, are taken from a rare collection of sixteenth-century engravings called the Recueil Fossard, which M. Duchartre has recently brought out in reproduction with the imprint of his own publishing house, Duchartre et Van Buggenhoudt, of Paris. The Recueil is the result of the unhoped-for discovery by M. Agne Beijer of a magnificent in-folio album which was in the uncatalogued reserves of the Museum of Stockholm. It was made by a certain M. Fossard for Louis XIV, and, so far as is known, it had never been published, nor had more than two of the engravings ever been found in any other work.

Among the illustrations are three drawings by Domenico Tiepolo which Messrs Victor Rosenthal and Raymond Bloch have courteously given us permission to reproduce. The drawing from M. Bloch's collection is here published for the first time.

With the permission of M. Duchartre the translator has added a number of footnotes, usually embodying the views of other writers, explanatory of certain aspects of the subject. In order not to encumber the pages the longer of these have been relegated to appendices. In this connexion grateful acknowledgment is made to the proprietors of The Mask for the use of extracts from that periodical, and to Mr Cyril W. Beaumont for the use of passages from his History of Harlequin.

No attempt, it should be added, has been made to reconcile the differing spellings of certain names of characters, etc., which exist.

The translator wishes to express his sincere thanks to Messrs George Vardy and Pierre Loving for much valuable assistance with the translation.

R. T. W.

PARIS

June 1929

Contents

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

Illustrations