Shakespeare and Italian Comedy

Aims 

This course aims to:   

• introduce you to Commedia dell'Arte as a vibrant Shakespearean source  
   
• enable understanding of Commedia dell'Arte as a presence in both his comedy and his tragedy  
• help to locate Shakespeare in stage performance, not just on the scholarly page

Content 

Although it tends to be horribly ignored in critical writing, it is very clear that Shakespeare was familiar with many elements of Commedia dell’arte, a masked and improvised Venetian drama that emerged in the sixteenth 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 actually 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, as if 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 comedic tonality had by then evolved far beyond Commedia its elements and tropes remain, shaping the characterization 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 Guidenstern 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. 

Presentation of the course  

Each session will begin with a mini-lecture and PowerPoint presentation, lasting 30–45 mins, and subsequently open to question and answer, and contributions by all. 

Course sessions 

1. The limits of evidence and the imperatives of Shakespeare’s theatrical matrix.  
    
2. Love’s Labour’s Lost - The pressures of scripted drama.  
    
3. Twelfth Night - The endurance of types and tropes.  
    
4. Hamlet - Setting Pantalone loose in Elsinore.  
    
5. King Lear - All fused by lightning 

Learning outcomes 

You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.  

 The learning outcomes for this course are:  

• an understanding of Commedia dell’Arte as an element of Shakespearean dramaturgy 
   
• an understanding of its presence in tragedy   
   
• an understanding of Shakespeare’s unsurpassed generic engineering 

Required reading 

Woudhuysen, H, R, editor, Love’s Labour’s Lost (Arden 1998) 
ISBN: 0174435002 

Elam, Keir, editor, Twelfth Night (Arden 2008)  
ISBN: 9781903436998 

Thompson, Ann and Taylor, Neil, editors, Hamlet (Arden 2006, revised 2016)  
ISBN: 9781472518385 

Weis, René, editor, King Lear: A Parallel Text (Longman 1993)  
ISBN: 0582040523* 

*This is my preferred edition, available used, and I cannot recommend either the Arden 3 (editor Foakes) or the World’s Classics editions (editor Wells) - but for the text alone any reputable edition is acceptable. 

Typical week: Monday to Friday 

Courses run from Monday to Friday. For each week of study, you select a morning (Am) course and an afternoon (Pm) course. The maximum class size is 25 students.   

Courses are complemented by a series of daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to your 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 £75 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 after the programme.