Theatre Survey http://journals.cambridge.org/TSY Additional services for Theatre Survey: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Performance as Exchange: Taxation and Jewish Theatre in Early Modern Italy Erith Jaffe-Berg Theatre Survey / Volume 54 / Issue 03 / September 2013, pp 389 - 417 DOI: 10.1017/S0040557413000276, Published online: 29 August 2013 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0040557413000276 How to cite this article: Erith Jaffe-Berg (2013). Performance as Exchange: Taxation and Jewish Theatre in Early Modern Italy. Theatre Survey, 54, pp 389-417 doi:10.1017/ S0040557413000276 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/TSY, IP address: 138.23.220.243 on 20 Nov 2013 Theatre Survey 54:3 (September 2013) © American Society for Theatre Research 2013 doi:10.1017/S0040557413000276 Erith Jaffe-Berg PERFORMANCE AS EXCHANGE:TAXATION AND JEWISH THEATRE IN EARLY MODERN ITALY In early modern Italy, an unusual form of exchange between Jewish and Christian communities materialized in Mantua: Jews in Mantua were required to Erith Jaffe-Berg is associate professor of theatre at the University of California at Riverside, where she also cochairs the Minor in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is the author of The Multilingual Art of Commedia dell’Arte (Legas, 2009) and has published articles in Early Theatre, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Quaderni d’Italinistica, Scripta Mediterranea, Text & Presentation, and various other journals and edited col- lections. She is currently completing a book manuscript titled Mediterranean Cartographies in Commedia dell’Arte. This essay was originally presented at the 2011 conference of the American Society of Theatre Research, and I would like to thank the conveners of the working session, Jenna Soleo-Shanks and Lofton Durham, as well as the mem- bers of the group, especially Jody Enders and Noah Guynn, for their belief in the importance of this research. Special thanks to Theatre Survey editors Leo Cabranes-Grant and Esther Kim Lee for their guidance and suggestions. Many thanks to Kate Babbitt for her contribution, which went far beyond copyedit- ing, and to the anonymous reader of this essay for valuable suggestions. Much appreciation to Robin Russin and Antonio Donato for reading the essay, to Brunella Antomarini and Sherri Johnson for their help with translations, and to Anne MacNeil for her guidance in Mantua. My research was supported by a residency at the Center for Ideas and Society and a CORE grant from UC Riverside. I would also like to thank Dott. Daniela Ferrari, the director of the State Archives of Mantua (Archivio di Stato di Mantova [ASM]), and her staff for all their help during the completion of this essay. Materials in this archive are found in files (buste) and documents (carte); I designate these materials using “B” and “C,” which are the common notations used in the archives. I was also able to use the Jewish Community Archives (Archivi della communita ebraica a Mantova [ADCEM]), currently under 389 Theatre Survey perform an annual play as a tribute to their Gonzaga rulers. Elsewhere in the Italian peninsula, far more onerous “performances” were extorted from the Jews during carnival, but in the Mantuan performances, several communities—the ruling Gonzaga family, the Jewish community, and Christian audience members— interacted. I consider these performances a form of taxation because the full cost, which was extensive, was borne by the Jewish community. However, the perform- ances were more than mere payment; they also gave the Jewish community a degree of autonomy and expression and enabled performers to develop their artis- tic skills, albeit always as the members of the company of “the Jews,” a group that was set apart from the rest of society in early modern Mantua. These theatrical performances can be seen as a public reification of the Jewish community as a dis- tinctively marked but legitimate component of Mantua’s economy and social land- scape. This dynamic continued in Mantua even as Jews in other parts of Italy were subjected to extremely harsh conditions during the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Inquisition. This article examines the evolution of performance by Jewish artists in Mantua from the 1520s through 1650. At a very productive phase of Jewish thea- trical productions, from the 1560s to the early 1600s, the performances evolved into a medium of exchange that had a sociocultural component as well as an econ- omic one. As tensions between Christian and Jewish communities mounted in the decades after the Council of Trent (1545–63), the performances became a crucial component of negotiations between Jews and the Gonzaga dukes: the rulers con- tinued to provide some measure of protection to the Jews of Mantua despite increased pressure from the church to enforce punitive elements of papal bulls, in exchange for which they required theatrical productions as a tribute. In the late sixteenth century, Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga and his successor, Vincenzo Gonzaga, initiated policies that created more restrictions for Jews in order to pro- tect them and assuage Christians by visibly separating the two groups. In exchange, the Jews turned the performances they were mandated to provide into ever-more-costly productions that offered increasingly visible tributes. These per- formances operated on another level as well: they illustrated to the Christian com- munity, the church, and emissaries from foreign governments what otherwise went unspoken—that the ties between Jews and the dukes of Gonzaga were strong. However, because the performances were mandated by the dukes and because the Jewish community funded them entirely, the productions were in effect a tax it paid in return for its safety. These performances thus offered several the directorship of Emanuel Colorni. ADCEM materials are referred to as files ( filze) and documents (cartelle) and I use the abbreviations of “F” and “C” for this collection. Most of the documents from ADCEM are available online through an interface with the Teresiana Library in Mantua. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own. 390 Performance as Exchange forms of tribute to the Gonzaga dukes, both financial and political. As prominent Jewish playwright and community leader Leone de’ Sommi articulated it, the Jewish community was able to live “under the happy shadow and secure protec- tion” of the Gonzaga.1 My analysis draws on research by theatre scholars and Jewish studies scho- lars, who argue that these public performances should be analyzed with the same nuance historians have used in their analysis of the Counter-Reformation. Although the performances were punitive in the sense that they were mandatory and costly, they were a reflection of the implicit, unspoken dialogue that was taking place between Christians and Jews.2 To understand the significance of that dialogue, we only have to look at what was happening elsewhere in Italy, where interactions of Christians with Jews were far from respectful. In Rome, there was a tradition called the giudiata in which Christians imitated Jewish rituals such as weddings and funerals in a degrading way.3 These enactments, which were staged during the unruly period of the carnival, often incited violence in the audi- ence.4 The full significance of the Mantuan performances has not yet been explored. Historians of Jewish history have not considered the importance of thea- trical productions to the cultural survival of Jews in Mantua, and theatre historians have not implemented Jewish historical perspectives in their studies of the period. I use both theatre history and Jewish history to illuminate a more nuanced analysis of the late sixteenth-century performances of the Jews of Mantua, one that under- stands these performances as involving both cooperation and coercion. I draw on theories of money as a form of exchange to explain how performance functioned as a form of taxation, and I argue that performance as tax was a part of the process of “reification” of Jews in Mantua, in which they were differentiated from Christians but were also included as part of the social and economic fabric of the city. The performances of Jews were important for both the survival of the community and the prosperity of the Gonzaga rulers. The fact that Mantuan rulers used such performances simultaneously to include Jews in the local community and to pacify Christian residents of the city provides an important example of inter- cultural negotiation in the early modern period. THE JEWS OF MANTUA AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION The lively theatrical scene that developed in Mantua in the sixteenth century was part of a larger culture of the arts that was cultivated and promoted by mem- bers of the house of Gonzaga, the ruling family of the duchy. Both male and female members of this noble, wealthy family were patrons of the arts, especially music. Jewish theatre was quite stable in Mantua, largely due to the protection of the Gonzaga family. Leone de’ Sommi (1527–1592) was a key figure in this theatre and in the Jewish community. He wrote at least fourteen Jewish plays that were performed in a variety of venues: at state events, for the Accademia degli Invaghiti (Academy of the Infatuated Ones; founded by Cesare Gonzaga of Guastalla), at Gonzaga family weddings, and at carnival festivities. Literary scholar Donald Beecher writes that he was “probably involved in most of the Mantuan court productions of the period, as well as in some of the major events 391 Theatre Survey in nearby Ferrara.”5 De’ Sommi aspired to construct a public theatre in Mantua to institutionalize theatre production there in ways that anticipated what later devel- oped elsewhere in Europe. Thus, it is clear that in the sixteenth century, Jews in Mantua were partici- pants in a vibrant cultural scene.