Moliere, commedia dell'arte, and the question of influence in early modern European theatre.(Critical Essay)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-APR-05

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Moliere, Commedia dell'arte, and the Question of Influence in Early Modern European Theatre by Richard Andrews

Although Moliere's links with Italian commedia dell' arte are recognized in general terms, there is still much analysis to be conducted on the level of detail. This paper attempts on the one hand to identify some typical units of comic monologue and dialogue which can be seen as influenced by practices of Italian comedy, both scripted and improvised. At the same time, it raises questions about the criteria which should be adopted in identifying 'sources' and 'influence' in this period of European drama when, within the theatre profession, texts and ideas were circulated by oral transmission as often as by written means.

The notion that the commedia dell'arte and Moliere have something to do with each other is hardly a new one. As a performer, Moliere was compared more than once in his lifetime to contemporary Italian actors--sometimes perhaps as a compliment, at other times as an accusation of plagiarism. As a playwright, his regular use of Italian models was perhaps first systematically highlighted by Luigi Riccoboni, in the early eighteenth century. (1) Riccoboni might have been biased, being himself a practitioner of comedie italienne in Paris; but the subject has never gone away since, and for most commentators it is now just a commonplace that Moliere lived and worked cheek by jowl with Italian actors, had Italian playscripts in his personal library, and was subject therefore to a steady stream of influence from Italian dramatic material. It might be supposed, then, that the subject has now been covered, and that there is no more to say. In fact, close examination of relevant material suggests that much remains to be researched and understood. In 1999 the Swiss scholar Claude Bourqui published a hugely impressive survey of Moliere's sources, (2) which gives the impression of being definitive; but Bourqui himself insisted in his own introduction to that volume that there is more work still to be done on Italian material in particular. He suggests (on p. 19) that surviving scenarios of Italian improvised theatre have not yet been studied as closely as they could be, either in themselves or in their implications for other drama. Bourqui's work is invaluable, and it is impossible now to work without constant reference to it. The present essay nevertheless claims to offer some further proposals, in respect of both material and methodology, which it is hoped will complement his approach rather than subvert it, and which may also suggest further lines of detailed enquiry. The proposals relate equally to the specific question of Italian influences on Moliere, and to the wider question of what we can regard as a 'source' in early modern European theatre.

In the first place we could suggest that, in order to designate the Italian material to which Moliere was responding, the very use of the words commedia dell'arte is understandable but has its dangers. The term itself was not known in Moliere's time: it is not documented until its use by Goldoni in 1750,. (3) Since then, a stereotype picture has been created of what commedia dell'arte was (or ought to be, or ought to have been), on which Italian researches of the last thirty years should now cast considerable doubt. It is a romanticized image, clung to especially hard by some French scholars, and indeed it was created first of all in France out of the researches of Maurice Sand. One of its most obstinate, but in fact most questionable, assumptions is formulated by Gustave Attinger at the end of his 1950 study of 'the Spirit' of commedia dell'arte in French theatre. 'La commedia dell'arte,' he says, 'c'est une conception plastique du theatre'; and a little later 'la commedia dell'arte subordonne tout au spectacle'. (4) In other words, it is allegedly a non-verbal form of theatre, in which meaning is regularly entrusted to gesture, slapstick, even mime, more often than to words. This premiss can lead to an exclusive, fenced-off picture of the genre; and to attempts to identify 'pure' commedia dell'arte as against more' hybrid' forms (a notion which Attinger himself pursues and supports). It posits an unbridgeable gulf, at least in terms of theoretical categories and definitions. It places on one side of the fence a professional Italian improvised theatre in which language is deemed to play a secondary role; and on the other side all more , literary' forms of drama, including written comic playscripts composed in Italian. In the light of more recent scholarship, this is now a view impossible to sustains. (5) In terms of plot material, stereotypes of character, and standard scene patterns, we now tend to see an unbroken continuum in early modern Italy between fully scripted plays and improvised scenarios. The improvising actors themselves relied heavily on stylistic models taken from literature, both dramatic and nondramatic: the way in which arte professionals 'learnt their part' was to ransack and memorize large stocks of material from written and printed sources. The deployment of words (rather than mime or gesture) was the focal point of their craft. Leading practitioners, such as Giovan Battista Andreini (1576-1654), who brought companies five times to Paris, (6) composed and performed both fully scripted and improvised drama, and argued for the legitimacy of both. In terms of genre, their work included experiments which could mingle comic, sentimental, and heroic tones in the same play. It is noteworthy that the only three texts securely known to have been performed by Italians in Paris before Moliere's establishment at the Petit-Bourbon were extremely mixed in tone and style, making use of music and spectacle, and of mythical or romantic stories, as well as some knockabout comedy. (7)

Facts like these should affect our approach to Italian influence on Moliere. For example, it is comfortably established that his early comedy L'Etourdi (composed around 1655) is closely based on Niccolo Barbieri's L'inavvertito (first printed 1629); but more account should be taken of the fact that the Italian source is a fully scripted play composed by a practitioner of improvised theatre, and that Barbieri has therefore registered, or alluded to, a number of pieces of arte repertoire in his 'non-arte' text. Then again, Moliere's early, 'serious' play Dom Garcie de Navarre (1661) is based on Cicognini's Le gelosie fortunate del prencipe Rodrigo, (8) a play often now categorized as a 'heroic comedy'. A source like this is traditionally put in a separate category from commedia dell'arte In fact it is now easier to see all such material as part of a single promiscuous corpus of Italian drama; and to note that a play like Cicognini's could easily have been performed by Italian professionals, and used as a basis for improvised scenarios. Rather than trying to isolate Moliere's relationship to something specific called 'commedia dell'arte , it is arguably more accurate simply to acknowledge his continuing relationship with a single broad Italian tradition of dramaturgy and performance.

Having adopted that as an opening premiss, some qualification is nevertheless necessary when speaking of Italian influence in France. The professional troupes which appealed to French audiences (from the 1570s through to Moliere's time) had to overcome a language barrier, and they may well have done this initially by accentuating what we now call 'physical theatre' at the expense of some of the verbal humour. When Italian companies became permanently established in Paris, they performed what was formally designated as 'Italian comedy', whose exotic character was part of its commercial appeal. There was a steady process subsequently by which comedie italienne adapted itself to Parisian tastes and demands, and this included assimilation to the French language.9 But transformations of this sort would have become more apparent after Moliere's death in 16'73. In Moliere's own time, French audiences (as opposed perhaps to more knowledgeable French theatre practitioners) may still have perceived 'Italian comedy' as more populist, less verbally sophisticated, and sometimes more knockabout, than French comic theatre. Perhaps we can after all continue to use the retrospective term commedia dell'arte in respect of Italian influences on Moliere; but we should do so with caution, and certainly not try to make rigid distinctions or seek concepts of 'purity'.

What certainly did characterize Italian theatre in Moliere's time is the fact that professional troupes regularly dispensed with the services of a dramatist, and constructed their shows by improvisation. This did not, however, involve the constant creation of new material. On the contrary, it usually involved a systematic recycling of old material--of jokes and routines which already existed in the repertoire of individual actors, and of plot units (such as the Don Juan story) which had originally been filched from written plays and were now common property for the theatrical profession. This kind of 'actors' theatre', despite later romanticized views, is actually conservative rather than innovative. Improvising companies may have had some trouble with political and moral authorities, precisely because their unwritten material could not be pinned down by a censor's reading; but for commercial reasons they could not afford to make their shows seriously subversive, either in form or in content. In order to override existing formats, and create something really new, one needs a coherent vision from an individual dramatist. The Italians did not have dramatists; and so Saint-Evremond, writing in the 1660s, characterized them as 'd'excellens Comediens, qui ont de fort mechantes Comedies'. (10) Their reliance on a common stock of material, only partially ever written down, has major implications for our understanding of what 'influence' or 'sources' could mean in practice in the theatre of this period, and that is the subject which we shall address later. But first of all it is worth considering some smaller-scale practical aspects both of conventional Italian plotting and of the art of improvisation, and how they can be seen reflected in the detailed dramaturgy of Moliere. (11)

An improvising actor of this period had his or her own stock of memorized repertoire speeches, (12) stylistically suitable for the mask or character concerned. Such speeches could be easily adapted to the rather limited range of circumstances...

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