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THEATRE of the ENGLISH and ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance

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THEATRE of the ENGLISH and ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance THEATRE OF THE ENGLISH AND ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance Edited by J. R. MULRYNE Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies and Chairman, Graduate School of Renaissance Studies, University of Warwick and MARGARET SHEWRING Lecturer in Theatre Studies and Course DirectoT, Graduate School of Renaissance Studies, University of Warwick Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-21738-0 ISBN 978-1-349-21736-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21736-6 © J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring 1991 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1991 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1991 ISBN 978-0-312-06771-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance / edited by J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring. p. cm. Revised papers from a Seminar on 'English and ltalian Renaissance Theatre' held at the University of Warwick, May 1987. Inc1udes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-06771-7 1. Italian drama-To 17OQ-History and criticism-Congresses. 2. English drama-Early modem and Elizabethan, 1500-1600-History and criticism-Congresses. 3. Theater-ltaly-History-16th century-Congresses. 4. Theater-England-History-16th century­ -Congresses. I.Mulryne. J.R. 11. Shewring, Margaret. 111. Seminar on 'English and Italian Renaissance Theatre' (1987: University ofWarwick) PQ4139.T54 1991 352'.409-dc20 91-21021 CIP Contents List of Plates vii Preface viii Notes on the Contributors x PARTONE Performance and Playing Places of the Italian Renaissance 1 The Changing Scene: Plays and Playhouses in the Italian Renaissance Michael Anderson 3 2 Scripted Theatre and the Commedia dell' Arte Richard Andrews 21 3 The Theatrical Activities of Palla di Lorenzo Strozzi in Lyon in the 1540s ludith Bryce 55 PARTTWO The Italian Renaissance Connection: Ben Jonson 4 Ben Jonson's Masques and Italian Culture lohn Peacock 73 5 Jonson's Venice Brian Parker 95 6 Aretino' s Comedies and the Italian 'Erasmian' Connection in Shakespeare and Jonson Christopher Cairns 113 PART THREE The Italian Renaissance Connection: Lyly and Shakespeare 7 ParalleIs between Italian and English Courtly Plays in the Sixteenth Century: Carlo Turco and John Lyly Noemi Messora 141 v vi Contents 8 Courtier and Courtesy: Castiglione, Lyly and Shakespeare' s Two Gentlemen o[ VeroM M. C. Bradbrook 161 9 Shakespeare' s 'Verismo' and the ItaIian Popular Tradition Hugh M. Richmond 179 10 Honest Iago and the Lusty Moor: the Humanistic Drama of honestas/voluptas in a Shakespearean Context Maristella de Panizza Lorch 204 11 Postscript: EIizabethan Dramatists and ltaly Leo Salingar 221 Further Reading 238 Index 245 List of Plates Following p. 164 1. Frontispiece to Jacob Trechael's edition of Terence (Lyons, 1493). 2. Frontispiece to Simon de Luere's edition of Terence (Venice, 1497). 3. Engraving by Jacques Callot of the first Intermedio for lA Liberatione di Tirreno in the Uffizi Palace, Florence (1616). 4. Plan of a Roman theatre in Giocondo's edition of Vitruvius (Venice, 1511). 5. Plan, perspective and section of a Roman theatre in Cesariano' s edition of Vitruvius (Corno, 1521). 6. From Barbaro's edition of Vitruvius (Venice, 1556): Elevation of part of the scaenae frons of a Roman theatre. 7. Plan of the theatre erected in the Campidoglio, Rome (1513). 8. The loggia of Alvise Cornaro's palace in Padua constructed by Fa1conetto (1524). 9. Scene from a Plautine Comedy (Venice, 1518). 10. A floating 'theatre' in Venice (1564). 11. From Sebastiano Serlio, Il secondo !ibro d'architettura (Paris, 1545): (a) Groundplan for the design of a theatre and its scene; (b) Perspective of a scene for comedy. 12. Baldassare Land' s perspective of the Piazza Signoria, Florence. vii Preface This collection of essays takes its origin from a Seminar on 'English and ltalian Renaissance Theatre' held at the University of Warwick in May 1987. The Seminar was arranged by the Graduate School of Renaissance Studies and the Department of Italian of the University, and was supported by the European Humanities Research Centre. Each of the papers originally given at that Seminar has been thoroughly revised and rewritten for inclusion here, and a number of the essays were specially commissioned in order to extend the range and enhance the coherence of the Seminar papers. The editors are grateful for helpful commentary to a number of Seminar partici­ pants including Professor Marie-Therese Jones-Davies (Sorbonne), Professor Remington Patterson (Columbia University, New York), Dr.Lois Potter (University of Leicester), Ms Jennifer Lorch and Mrs. Judy Rawson (Department of ltalian, University of Warwick). It is probably true to say that the relationships between Italian theatre of the Renaissance and the English theatre of the same or of a slightly later period have not been exhaustively studied because of academic separation between specialists of the relevant disciplines. There are, of course, notable exceptions including, for example, the work of Leo Salingar. But generally speaking the compartmentalisation characteristic of much academic life has tended to diminish the attention given to relationships between the two theatres. The Warwick Seminar, and this book, were conceived as a contribution to improving interchange between the relevant disciplines. Contributors include scholars from a range of academic fields including English Literature, Theatre Studies, Italian and French. The essays collected here do not attempt source or influence study of the familiar kind. They seek rather to illuminate the repertoire of each country' s theatre by seeing the theatre of the English Renaissance in the overall context of Italian theatrical modes and thought. A first section considers performance and playing places, together with a specific example of the presentation of Italian theatre abroad, on this occasion in France. A second section identifies some features of what is probably the most direct connection between the English and Italian theatres of the viii Preface ix Renaissance, Ben Jonson' s acceptance of and resistance to Italian theories and cultural practice. Even here, however, Christopher Cairns finds it convenient to bracket Jonson with Shakespeare, and the book' s third section broadens this interest by studying the ltalian connection in the work of Shakespeare and Lyly. The book is completed by Leo Salingar' s postscript, drawing together some of the common themes of the foregoing essays and extending the range to take in Marston' s Malcontent. The coHection is intended to interest the non-specialist reader as weH as scholars in the field. We have therefore provided translations of Italian quotations. We have also included lists of further reading which may assist the non-specialist in obtaining a wider view of our subject. We have not sought to impose a rigorous standardisation on quotations from works in English or Italian but we have used the Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare unless there is a statement to the contrary. J. R. MULRYNE and MARGARET SHEWRING University of Warwick Notes on the Contributors Michael Anderson is Professor of Drama at the University of Kent. With Alessandra Anderson he is editing a volume of documents relating to the theatre of the Italian Renaissance. Richard Andrews is Professor of Italian at the University of Leeds. He has a major acadernic interest in Italian and other theatre, and has translated and written on Commedia deli' Arte, on other Italian drama, on Calvino and on the modern theatre. Muriel Bradbrook was Professor of English at Cambridge during 1968-76, and has held visiting professorships in Japan, Kuwait and the USA. She is Honorary Professor of the Graduate School of Renaissance Studies, University of Warwick, and holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Liverpool, Sussex, London and Gothenburg and from Smith College and Kenyon College, USA. She has published over twenty books on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama and on modern authors. Judith Bryce is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Hull. She has published articles on modern Italian authors, but the main area of her research is sixteenth-century Florence. She is currently at work on a study of the relations between the Florentine Academy and the University of Pisa in the 1540s. Christopher Cairns is Reader in Italian Drama at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, having forrnerly lectured in Italian there. His research has included Italian history and literature of the Renaissance, and now centres on Renaissance comedy and festival. His books include Domenico Bollani, Bishop 0/ Brescia ... (1976) and most recently, Pietro Aretino and the Republic 0/ Venice ... (1985). He is currently preparing a critical edition of Aretino's Ragionamento della corti. Maristella de Panizza Lorch is Professor of Italian at Columbia University, New York, and Executive Director of the Center x Notes on the Contributors xi for International Scholarly Exchange. Her publications inc1ude translations of works by Lorenzo Valla and numerous books and articles on Valla, Ariosto and Boiardo. Noemi Messora is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian at the University of Warwick, and Director of the Language Centre. She graduated from the Bocconi University in Milan with a doctoral thesis on 'Victorian Shakespeare Criticism' and took a PhD at the University of Warwick with a thesis on 'The Commedia Erudita in the Brescian Territory in the Mid-sixteenth Century (1545-1558)'. She is author of Il Teatro Lombardo sotto la Repubblica di Venezia: Commedie Bresciane del'50D (Bergamo, 1978), and has written articles and lectured widely on Italian Renaissance Drama. J. R. Mulryne is Professor of English at the University of Warwick, where he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor from 1982 to 1987. He was for­ merly Reader in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, and is General Editor of The Revels Plays and of Shakespeare' s Plays in Performance.
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