Comedy, Commedia Dell’arte, and THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
How this classic form of Italian comedy influenced one of Shakespeare’s most madcap plays
Onstage at Lantern Theater Company now through June 16, 2024, The Comedy of Errors is among Shakespeare’s earliest comedies as well as his shortest. While its plot is indebted to an ancient Roman comedy by Plautus, much of its humor derives from a more recent theatrical form: Italy’s commedia dell’arte, a zany, physical, and high-spirited genre that runs through all of the hijinks in The Comedy of Errors.
Commedia dell’arte — or “comedy of the profession” — was an Italian form of comedy that was especially popular in the 16th to 18th centuries. Commedia troupes would travel from town to town (and eventually country to country), performing in the open air. It was an ensemble genre, and built its comedy around physical humor and the improvisational skills of its actors.
These improvisations were hung on a situational framework, and its plots were generally familiar stories from classical traditions or the commedia erudita, or “literary drama” — just as The Comedy of Errors takes after Plautus. The actors would improvise their dialogue around these plots, allowing them to tailor the performance to each particular audience. Only one element of commedia dell’arte was tightly scripted: the lazzi, which were carefully choreographed and rehearsed bits of stage business, fighting, or acrobats.
Like the plots, the characters were also familiar types. Actors in these troupes each mastered a particular stock character, honoring its core elements while adding their own twist to bring them to familiar yet unpredictable life. These characters could then be inserted into any commedia plot, and the most popular of them appeared again and again.
The zanni were the servants whose wily actions help clean up the messes of their masters. Within the servant class, Harlequin and Columbina are a valet and a maid, respectively, and often in love with one another. Their counterparts on the opposite end of the social spectrum are the innamorati, or the young lovers of the upper class whose marriage plot is usually central to the play. Pantalone is a rich womanizer, comically old and miserly. Il Dottore is a parody of the learned, pompous academic. Other than the fresh faced innamorati, all comic characters in commedia were masked.
Commedia dell’arte dates to at least 1545. Competing troupes traversed Italy, delighting audiences with their particular mixes of familiarity, surprise, and physical humor. Though the form developed in Italy, it spread throughout continental Europe and found particular success in France, where there were resident troupes of so-called Comédie-Italienne performers. Molière, the giant of French comedy, worked with visiting Italian commedia troupes to learn the tricks of their trade, and the French court sometimes hosted troupes for royal performances.
Commedia was also popular in England, and Shakespeare was certainly familiar with the genre and its tropes. Its influence can be seen in many of his plays, including The Comedy of Errors — while Shakespeare’s play is tightly scripted rather than improvised, it is directly tied to classical sources and uses at least some of commedia’s stock characters. It also leans heavily on commedia’s madcap energy, physical comedy, and increasingly zany situations. The servant-master dynamic is also a hallmark of both commedia dell’arte and The Comedy of Errors, though Shakespeare twists it by making both sets of twins equally confused by their increasingly bizarre circumstances.
The fervor for commedia wasn’t to last; by the beginning of the 18th century, the genre as it once was had mostly disappeared from Europe — though its lasting effect on comedy was profound. Though Shakespeare, Molière, and other giants of comedic playwriting eliminated the improvisation and wrote their own stories, the madcap energy and core of the stock characters remained. Servants trick masters, lovers are kept apart by overbearing parents, and physical comedy abounds throughout the centuries since commedia’s disappearance. And though the characters and situations of The Comedy of Errors may seem familiar, how they unwind is full of delirious surprise. Such was the magic of commedia, and of the plays indebted to it: recognizable characters and stories, taken to uproarious heights.
More great reading: See other recent articles and interviews on the Lantern Searchlight blog
Lantern Theater Company’s production of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is onstage May 16 through June 16, 2024, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
