{"id":3669,"date":"2025-04-04T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T12:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/?p=3669"},"modified":"2025-04-01T19:38:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T00:38:36","slug":"did-you-know-the-women-of-commedia-dellarte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/did-you-know-the-women-of-commedia-dellarte\/","title":{"rendered":"Did You Know? The women of commedia dell’arte"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t

Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. (Public domain.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

\n
\n\t

[Note: I am re-posting some short articles I wrote for Theatre Unbound's website many years ago. Read the full series<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

In Mantua, Italy, in the 1560s, two women achieved celebrity as actresses and managers of troupes performing commedia dell\u2019arte.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one pays attention to anything but the plays, nor do you hear anything among the people but the words: \u2018I am of Flaminia\u2019s party\u2019 and \u2018I am of Vincenza\u2019s,\u2019 and both houses fill up with parties of friends,\u201d wrote poet Antonio Ceruto in a letter in July 1566. Vincenza Armani and \u201cFlaminia\u201d of Rome (most likely her stage name) both led theatre troupes, and both astonished the crowds with lavish spectacle, lively improvisation, and stories of honorable young women in love.<\/p>\n

In 1568, Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga staged a contest between the two companies. Each presented a comedy, and the Duke selected the best performers, including Flaminia and Vincenza, to form a new troupe, I Gelosi, \u201cto serve his family at home and abroad,\u201d according to Frances K. Barasch. The troupe was active for more than thirty years and went on to feature other notable women such as Vittoria Pissimi and Isabella Andreini.<\/p>\n

Kathleen McGill has pointed out that both women and the use of improvisation appeared in commedia at about the same time, and argues that this was cause and effect: women\u2019s culture was oral, not written, and the female performers brought their expertise at oral composition to the commedia form. \u201cBecause the repertory improvisation developed by the commedia dell\u2019arte of the sixteenth century influenced not only the Italian theater, but the theater of Moliere, Beaumarchais, and of the English Restoration,\u201d she says, \u201cattribution of the commedia\u2019s improvisation affects virtually the entire record of theater in the West.\u201d We may owe a great deal to Flaminia, Vincenza and their female colleagues.<\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/p>\n

Barasch, Frances K. \u201cItalian Actresses in Shakespeare\u2019s World: Flaminia and Vincenza.\u201d (Shakespeare Bulletin<\/em> 17, Fall 2000).<\/p>\n

Finucci, Valeria (ed.). Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso.<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).<\/p>\n

Henke, Robert. Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell\u2019Arte.<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).<\/p>\n

McGill, Kathleen. \u201cWomen and Performance: The Development of Improvisation by the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell\u2019Arte.\u201d (Theatre Journal<\/em>, v. 49, no. 3, 1991).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Mantua, Italy, in the 1560s, actor\/managers Flaminia and Vincenza ran rival companies attracting passionately devoted fans. Then they got that invitation from the Duke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[162,155,160,157,159,161,158,114],"class_list":["post-3669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre","tag-commedia-dellarte","tag-did-you-know","tag-duke-guglielmo-gonzaga","tag-flaminia","tag-i-gelosi","tag-mantua","tag-vincenza","tag-women-in-theatre","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Scene_from_commedia_dellarte.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3669"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3673,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3669\/revisions\/3673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}