Harlequin (Arlecchino)
He is the king of the stage of the comedy dell’arte. This figure held an interest of many authors who wrote books about him. Harlequin is a shabby-genteel farmer, coming from the mountain valley of Bergamo in his clothes with patches. Originally he was wearing a black mask which looked like something eather animal or devilish (carnival performances). He is the second one, the simple-minded and clumsy of the couple of servants. In Venice, Harlequin’s speech, highland dialect, gesture, mimicry and costume smoothes.Gradually, the right-down dunce turns into a nice fumbler who wins the audience’s favour. Slow mentally, his body is suprisingly spry. He is an artist who retrains later, under the influence of the surrounding, in a dancer. Harlequin is a minion of the audience. The public watches his instinctive behaviour of a child, who thinks over after he acts. He is awkward and clumsy, he gets into situations when he is helplessly looking around and waiting, what bad is going to come out for him. This childish quandary was getting over the audience; it was shining over the caginess of his colleague Brighella, who was acting with cold forethought. Harlequin changed temperamentally both at home and abroad, gradually he lost the original simpleness and started reacting swiftly on new situations. Harleqiun’s costume was at the beginning of his era a white blouse and long, loose pants, later all sewn over with random, coloured patches. He was wearing a malleable felt hat with a hare’s tail which signalized a boggler. At the French court, the costume has formalized. It was tight-fitting, the patches took the form of triangles and later diamonds, which were arranged in a symetrical pattern. Harlequin’s mask was dark, sometimes made of two parts, with little holes for eyes and a bulge on the forehead.
Pedrolino
He is an early age zanni, his later variation is pierot. He is a lonely person and gloom-ridden lover. He gets into troubles for his frankness. Sleeping while walking, he is an embodiment of innocence and ingenousness. He wears a baggy jacket with a very large falling collar going from his neck to his shoulder. He has long legs that waggle helplessly.
Brighella
(In Italian la briga – fight, trouble) is historically younger figure of the comedy dell’arte; he appears later, when Harlequin and Pantalone are performing already. He embodies the type of a smart peasant, cunning and tricksy, who came to the town to make his living. He is a world-wise, inventive, adaptable to each situation which may bring a benefit for him. He can dissimulate friendliness and in no time draw the sward. He is a servant for everything, but he serves to his master just as far as he gets paid.An original Brighella’s costume is a baggy linen dress which was beeing used in the countryside and in which one also his partner came on the stage. It was completed with a short white cloak, a little cap and tights and yellow shoes. The whole dress was decorated with green ornaments on the edges. The mask was of an olive green colour, with black disarranged beard.Brighella’s relatives are Scapino, Mezzetino, Flautino, Pasquariello and others, but non of them was living on the stage of the comedy dell’arte as intensively and long as Harlequin.
Pantalone
Old Man (his old name is Magnifico – magnificent, magnificence) using the Venetian dialect. He is a head-piece, swaggering, exhibiting his potence until he goes into a gout attack or gasps for breath. With his typical cupidity, focus on women and other attributes inadequate to the sedate age, he is a grateful laughing stock. However, he is not a trembling old-fellow; on the extant drawings usually his tall stature contrasts with his opposite – the doctor.
Pantalone’s costume consists of long, red, tight-fitting pants and a short, tight-fitting jacket of the same colour. He has a money pouch and sometimes a dagger at his belt, a loose black cloak – zimarra, and a bonnet on his head. He was wearing a dark half-face mask with accented features, a prominent nose and a white beard stretched on the chin, so that the tufts shook ludicrously when Pantalone was talking. Pantalone was a very important personage in the early stage of the comedy dell’arte. The actor who assumes this role should know perfectly the Venetian dialect.
Il dottore
Personages of the comedy dell’arte are often coupled and thus there are two old men as well. The other one is Il dottore, also an early type. Pedant from a literary comedy, he came with his cod erudition to the new theater as a distinctive gabber from Bologna. His figure in the comedy dell’arte usually relates to a scholastic profession like a philosopher, jurist, astronomer etc. Dottore is full of sentences, he often spits out latin quotations which he confuses. He knows a lot, but his knowledge misses any logic and in spite of his scholarship he is simple-minded and foolish in practical life.
The cheerfulness in the meetings of Dottore-Zanni insisted in the fact that Zanni has a mother wit and overmasters the life routine, whereas Dottore is full of knowledge which is unprocessed.
The doctor’s costume is basically a costume of a Bologna jurist, modified just a little for the theater. Doctor’s mask is unusual. It covers the nose and forehead only. Cheeks are thus revealed, often reddened to show Il dottore’s fondness for the bottle.
Zanni
The main figures on the stage of the comedy dell’arte are zanni, servants, comic personages par excellence. There are many theories about the origin of this generic name. Most probably it was transformed from the name Giovanni in the North-Italian dialect.
In the northern set-up (the Venetian), they are both from Bergamo, in the southern one from Neapoli. The first zanni is more active, developing the involution; he does not teem with many positive characteristics. The second one is a gum-sucker, the instrument of the first one.
One is cunning and one is foolish; only this couple can show the variability. Both types are optimistic, their plan is to trick the old ones and please the youth. The North-Italian couple Brighell – Arlecchino is from poor Bergamo, it’s female opposite was the couple Zagna-Fentesca.
Pulcinella
A southern Zanni, from the 17th century the king of Neapolitan and Roman stages. Originally he was a fozy, clumsy peasant who came to work to Naples and acclimatized himself there. Even from the titles of some southitalian screenplays, the colourfulness of Pulcinella’s repertoire is apparent: he is a lover, a fastidious lady, a joker and spy, a purler, a racker etc. He practises all sorts of professions and in contrast to Lombardic scenarios he usually performs solo, without a fellow.
His traits are partially influenced by his nothern mate Harlequin but he shows rather a grim humour and his laziness and esuriency is especially pointed out. He has become a minion of people, they pamper him even with all his weaknesses. Compared with nothern fellows, the southern zannis are slightly less inteligent. Pulcinella usually represents a character of a comic old man which is not featured very often. He has a lover, a fiancée or a guarrelsome wife and bushelful of kids (pulcinellini), both his own and stepped, who he takes care of. Pulcinella has developed from an unwieldy impotent person to a cunning servant which determines the main tone of a story. In Naples Pulcinella is considered to be sort of living newspaper, all remarkable that happened during the day he was glossing in the evening.
This personage was a source and a protagonist of a special repertoire of small forms. If was a various mixture of songs, sketches, lazzis etc. called „la pulcinaletta“.
He was so popular that he got beyond the theater personage and entered everyday life. We can find his footprints not only in Naples, but also in famous carnevals in Rome and Venice.
Pulcinella’s costume, much like costumes of other zannis from the first period, is composed of a light, loose linen blouse belted with a rope and light tights, later a hat, sometimes a humpback and a huge, warped belly which he has developed in France. He wears a black half-face mask with a hooked nose that gives him a bird-like look; sometimes he uses a murrey make up. From time to time he has a thymion on his forehead, just like his nothern fellow.
Pulcinella, Capitano and Scaramuccia formed a Neapolitan trio which was showing traits of southern Italians.
Coviello
(a short form of „Jacoviello“ – Jacob, little Jacob) from Abruzz is Pulcinella’s fellow, much like Brighella is a fellow of Harlequin. They are also alike in characters. Coviello bosses, Pulcinella obeys. At the beginning of this personage there also was a peasant who came to a town to look for a job.
At first he had attributes of a cowardly boaster, later he became a cunning servant. In southern scenarios, the zanni’s piece concentrated almost completely into Pulcinella’s part, even more than in Harlequin’s in the North. That is why Coviello’s figure did not have in the comedy dell’arte extra intense life. The early Coviello has a costume of all early zannis.
Zannis’ sketches were the center of a performance. Their figures brought fame to the Italian comedy; they got in other genres – musical comedies and fine art.
Il Capitano
There is not a unified opinion on the figure of Capitano. According to some sources the figure represented a protest of the Italian nation against a foreign domination, but it might have been just a half-truth.
Riccoboni says that Spaniards brought a few actors to Italy and this gave to the theater„capitanos“ who spoke a clear Spanish or a mixture of Spanish and Italian.
In the 16th century, Spanish capitano was diffused in poems, prose and paintings. In Italy he came to life in Naples , the Spanish enclave, where he was the basic element of a comic piece, likewise Pantalone with his servant in the North. Whereas there is a social jitter between Pantalone and zanni, Capitano’s servant Scaramuccia makes with mimicry and comic dance fun of his boss and gradually pushes him away from the stage.
Since Spaniards were cultivating this comic figure themselves or Spanish Capitano was performing with their consent (especially in Naples), he was meant to be a figure comic in general, without a direct social attack.
The development of Capitano was, under the complicated political and social terms in Italy, very variegated. At the beginning Capitano was a lover, later he became a purely comic figure.
Capitano has different boastful names: Matamoros, Fracasso (row) etc. He is a braggart not just in a military sphere, but also in the life on the whole. When there was time to act, a hero turned into a coward.
The figure of Capitano died out, according to the Riccoboni’s testimony, before the end of the 17th century.
Capitano’s costume is derived from a military uniform. When he was wearing a face mask (which was not always), it had gloomy expression with an outstanding nose and eyebrow.
Scaramuccia
is also of an Neapolitan origin. He was Capitano’s servant, later his gentler follower when Capitano’s inflatedness became antiquated. Scaramuccia’s costume does not remind anything war-like anymore. He was not wearing a face mask, he was just using a powder and expressive face-play. He was singing and playing guitar and his pantomimic sketches became famous.
He was wearing a black, closefitting costume, a poncho and frilly bonnet. Scaramuccia is a plotter, shifty but also timorous. He usually serves for a master who is not of a high social scale.
Tartaglia
Another important stock character (one of the southern ones) is Tartaglia (a stammerer) whose main characteristic is stutter – a dateless resource of comicality. By slurring he was offering to his partner – an improvisator – always new themes. On a stage he usually represented a public agent: a lawyer, a druggist or a judge, but he also used to be a servant. The focus of his acting is mainly in a face-play and the speech disorder. The contents of this type was changing according as the original impuls for the typification was ebbing away:
from a satyr to a little bumble, sometimes even of a intruder type. In accordance with it
the costume was changing. His stature was rather small, with a paunch; his face was clean-shaven, with big glasses which served partially as a face-mask.
Fantesca or Servetta
She was the female equivalent to zanni in the comedy dell’arte. When she personated Harlequin’s wife or spouse she was sometimes wearing a costume with the typical Harlequin pattern. Otherwise she did not use any characteristic costume nor she weared a face mask, unless there was a special occasion for that. She was using literary language, like her madam. She was called Franceschina, Pasquetta, Turchetta, Ricciolina, Smeraldina, Colombina.