Shakespeare and Italian comedy

Although commonly ignored in criticism, it is very clear that Shakespeare was familiar with commedia dell’arte, a masked and improvised Venetian drama that emerged in the 16th century and produced many traveling troupes. Both its roles (or masks) and its characteristic structures and actions repeatedly appear in his comedies, from the repressive father Pantalone to the stuttering Tartaglia and braggart soldier, Il Capitano, and from the cross-pairings of lovers to the disastrous encounter of Il Capitano with that real soldier, Il Cavaliero — but they also make the jump to his tragedy, with startling results.  

The Folio text of Love’s Labour’s Lost gives Don Adriano de Armado and Holofernes the speech-prefixes Brag (for Braggart) and Ped (for Pedant), underlining the presence of character-types, and the action centres on four pairs of lovers, doubling the two typical of Commedia. But in Shakespeare’s scripted and usually unmasked dramatic world those elements must be set to new and distinctive uses, while all are subordinated to his greater comedic purpose. That purpose brought Shakespeare almost a decade later to Twelfth Night, and while his comedy had by then evolved far beyond Commedia its elements and tropes remain, shaping the characterisation of Sir Toby Belch and the encounter of Sir Andrew Aguecheek with Sebastian. Yet the pairing of fat Belch and thin Aguecheek also parallels the odd couple of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet – where the part of Pantalone is played by Polonius, even unto his absurd and awful death. And in theatrical terms Polonius’s greatest descendant as an angry, prating, and profoundly foolish parent whose children all die is King Lear, a tragic protagonist whose peculiar agony largely depends on the comedic armature Shakespeare used to construct him.  

Awareness of the presence of elements taken from Commedia in Shakespeare’s drama, and especially awareness of their translocations into tragedy, illuminates much about his work. They made up a significant part of his comedic toybox, and brought to his great tragedies the generic tensions that animate them and make for their most haunting scenes. It also speaks directly to the matrix of theatrical knowledge and practice within which he always worked, and without which the true scope and nature of his achievement cannot be clearly understood. 

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are:

• To understand the presence of material derived from Commedia dell’arte in Shakespeare’s work 
• To compare its uses in earlier and later Shakespearean comedy  
• To recognise its continuing use in mature Shakespearean tragedy

Classes

1. The limits of evidence and the imperatives of Shakespeare’s theatrical matrix  
Much is uncertain in Shakespearean biography and chronology, but he must have learned about the stock roles and tropes he used from somewhere, and his dramatic purpose, always, was versatile theatrical success.  

2. Love’s Labour’s Lost – the pressures of scripted drama  
Commedia dell’arte is an improvised form, with plots but without scripted dialogue ; Shakespeare’s drama isn’t, but once you have a script things can so easily go off-script …  

3. Twelfth Night – the endurance of types and tropes  
Stock roles are common and widely used for excellent reasons, and they endure — but they can also be fused, twisted, or otherwise disguised …  

4. Hamlet – setting Pantalone loose in Elsinore  
… and transposed from one genre to another, often enough (in Shakespeare’s hands) with disastrous results for someone …  

5. King Lear – all fused by lightning  
… or several someones. Shakespeare’s generic engineering reaches an apogee (or nadir) in King Lear, a shattering tragedy deeply engaged with comedic material. 

Required reading

Love’s Labour’s Lost, edited by H R Woudhuysen (Arden 1998; ISBN 978-1904271103) 

Twelfth Night, edited by Keir Elam (Arden 2008; ISBN 978-1903436990) 

Hamlet, edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (Arden 2006; rev. 2016; ISBN 978-1472518385) 

King Lear: A Parallel Text, edited by René Weis (Longman 1993; rev. 2009; ISBN 978-1408204126)† 

†This is my preferred edition, available used, and I cannot recommend either the Arden 3 (edited by Foakes) or the World’s Classics editions (edited by Wells) – but for the text alone any reputable edition is good. Quotations will be provided via PowerPoint, but it would be good to have the texts in class; digital editions are fine. 

Typical week: Monday to Friday

For each week of study you select a morning (Am) and an afternoon (Pm) course, each course has five sessions, one each day Monday to Friday. The maximum class size is 25 students. Your weekly courses are complemented by a series of two daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.

Evaluation and Academic Credit 

If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses. 

Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £65 per essay.

For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.

Certificate of attendance

A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically within a week of your courses finishing.