Commedia Dell’Arte and Evolving Gender Dynamics

Abstract

An historical and dramaturgical analysis of Commedia Dell’Arte and Evolving Gender Dynamics through the years.

Full text

Asa Charles Leininger
Lect. Giulia Palladini
DRA020C133S: Performance and History – Diversifying the Canon
8 Apr. 2022
Commedia Dell’Arte and Evolving Gender Dynamics
“As Italian city-states suffered political and economic damage at the hands of the nation-
states and the Turks in the Renaissance, male figures in Italian paintings and plays were
portrayed as unable to maintain their control of society, female and low-status figures were
emphasized, and lower-class behavioral modes assumed importance” (Carroll, 1989: p. 531).
This 16th Century phenomenon described by Linda Carroll in her 1989 article for The Sixteenth
Century Journal is so important in thinking about gender dynamics within art and performance
because it is instrumental in understanding the historical evolution of how gender has been
presented and performed. Exclusion of women from many military endeavours during the wars
of the Italian Renaissance (Milligan, 2018: p. 231) directly influenced the rise of more unhinged
depictions of men and gave women more autonomy to structure Commedia performances how
they saw fit (Carroll, 1989: p. 531). Through the use of improvisation (McGill, 1991: p. 60),
women manipulated the situations presented in Commedia plays and dominated the dramatic
direction of the performances, effectively changing the representation of gender dynamics on the
Italian stage. This phenomenon, it should be noted, is not exclusive of periods and localities
other than the Italian Renaissance. Similar phenomena occurred in American theatre in the mid-
1900s as gender dynamics shifted again because of the Second World War. That period saw a
discontented return to more conservative conventions of gender dynamics within works like
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams, 2009) as men reclaimed the

patriarchal notion that a key aspect of their gendered duty was to protect (Nye, 2007: p. 423),
instruct, and effectively lord over the women in their lives (Timpane, 1995: p. 753). Thus, it
becomes clear that because of the historical exclusion of women from military conflict (U.S.
Capitol Visitor Center, 2022), periods of war have often been instrumental in re-shaping gender
dynamics in art.
In examining how war shaped the codified gender dynamics of Italian Renaissance
performance, it is necessary to understand conventions of war and how the commonplace and
respective separation of men and women on the battlefield and home-front factored into the
experience of early sixteenth-century Italians. Accounts from the late 15th century indicate that
armed forces in the Italian Renaissance conflicts were predominantly comprised of men, while
women favoured staying at home (Milligan, 2018: pp. 5-11). Women were noted as sometimes
participating in military conflicts, as a great number of conflicts during the Italian wars were
sieges and they on numerous occasions had to join the city’s defense, stepping into an
unconventional role and improvising out of a necessity for survival (Milligan, 2018: pp. 7-10).
However, these occasions were often seen as failures on the part of men, as it was commonly
held that it was their masculine duty to protect the home (Milligan, 2018: p. 6). Women
traditionally favoured a more passive involvement in the Italian wars, often shaming men who
were not keen to fight to join the fray and step into their natural role as a protector (Milligan,
2018: pp. 7-8) – much like British women did during The Great War (Gullace, 1997: p. 178).
Representation of gender in literature would change as a result of these phenomena, as women in
later accounts would often be given illustrious praise for their involvement in military conflict,
challenging the notion that men were solely responsible for the protection of society and ‘the
home’ (Milligan, 2018: p. 10).

This shift in the perception of gendered roles in society was further codified on the
Commedia stage. Influenced largely by the earlier Commedia Erudita court plays, Commedia
dell’Arte relied on vulgar humour, lazzi – a series of bits with a rough structure that would be
filled in with the improvisation of the individual performers – and stock characters (Brand, 1995:
pp. xxix-xli). However, where Commedia Erudita simply codified stereotypical behaviour,
Commedia dell’Arte performers wore masks to further codify the archetypical character of the
person they were playing (Ewald, 2005: p. 115). In the Commedia Erudita works that inspired
Commedia dell’Arte, like La Calandria of Bibbiena, we see a clear recognition of the changing
dynamics between men and women, as compared to other earlier Commedia Eruditas (Carroll,
1989: pp. 551-552). These new dynamics found in La Calandria can be found all throughout
Commedia dell’Arte (Carroll, 1989: p. 558), woven into the very masks which adorned the
actors.
Men in Commedia dell’Arte are, at base level, coded as being emotionally unstable. This
is due, primarily, to the masks they wore, which were always contorted into some grotesque and
extreme expression.
According to studies examining emotional responses in developing children, a key characteristic
of a lack of maturity is the inability to control one’s facial muscles (Cole, 1986: p. 1309). In
(Unknown, 1700-1725)

contrast to the older notion that men were supposed to take on the duty of being stoically noble
protectors (Milligan, 2018: p. 7), by freezing the exaggerated expressions of men in masks that
represented entire characters, Commedia dell’Arte actors coded men – including veterans of the
Italian Wars – as being emotionally immature. Indeed, it was often the aim of Commedia
dell’Arte actors to satirise aspects of society, which they often accomplished by using masks to
humourously reflect the behaviours of common people (Ebong, 1984: p. 2). This being the case,
they physically codified the common Italian man in an often highly unappealing fashion,
colouring him as an unstable force in society, thereby emasculating and weakening him. As this
development in the representation of men did not take reach cultural prominence until the latter
half of the 16th Century (Katritzky, 2008: p. 141), towards the end of the Italian wars, and ran
counter to pre-war depictions of men, it is quite clear that conflict played a vital role in the
evolution of codified gender dynamics in Renaissance Italy.
While women in Commedia dell’Arte often did not have masks to help codify the
conventional behaviours of their gender (Rudlin, 1994), they did have an impressive ability to
improvise. Like the women who had to improvise responses to forces besieging their cities
during the Italian Wars, the prominent women of the Commedia dell’Arte stage also often
improvised quite freely, partly a result of the oral tradition that characterised the domestic sphere
of Italian life (McGill, 1991: p. 68). Indeed, in an account of a Gelosi troupe performance at the
celebration of the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine in
1589, Isabella Andreini, the ‘leading lady’ of the troupe, is credited with heightening the
performance with her eloquence, elevating it beyond simply being a piece of amusement
(MacNeil, 1995: pp. 195-200). This improvisational prowess would prove to be just as
revolutionary as masks were when applied to codified gender dynamics in Commedia dell’Arte.

Because women could often improvise entire speeches with eloquence, they employed their
abilities in the creation of politically charged lazzi (McGill, 1991: pp. 63-64). Where these sorts
of lazzi might normally be censored, the women performers did not have to worry about their
creative satirising of society being stifled because the censors could not prohibit what was not
textual (McGill, 1991: pp. 63-64). While this allowed for women be codified as provocateurs, it
also allowed them to integrate a higher form of satire – one based in poetic art and more akin to
Commedia Erudita than the lower scatological and physical forms of humour presented by their
male counterparts – into performance without fear of repercussions (McGill, 1991: pp. 63-65).
This higher art is arguably one of the reasons Commedia troupes that possessed both men and
women players grew in popularity in the latter half of the 16th Century, with the Gelosi troupe to
which Andreini belonged standing as one, if not the most, popular troupe in all of Europe
(MacNeil, 1995: p. 195). As a result of these conditions, women took on a more noble role in
Commedia dell’Arte performances than the emotionally immature men, mirroring the shift in the
perception of women’s character that occurred during the Italian Wars. Thus, it becomes clear
that as gender dynamics evolved in Italy in the 16th Century as a result of the Italian Wars,
Commedia dell’Arte – influenced by those societal trends – presented codified reflections of
those novel gender dynamics in performance.
Now the attention of this essay will turn to examining similar phenomena in the theatre of
the mid-1900s, exploring how the Second World War affected the codified gender roles in
society, and how those post-war codifications affected the American theatre.
During and following the end of the Great War, there was a period of increased
progressivism when it came to gender roles as women vied for numerous rights – suffrage
paramount among these things – and freedoms not previously afforded to them (Cott, 1982: p.

897). When the Great Depression occurred, federal employment opportunities were created for
both men and women, but with the male-oriented opportunities such as the CCC labor camps
being much more prevalent than those available to women (Mitchell, 2012: p. 190). Because of
this, and because of the animosity directed at married women who attempted to maintain
positions within the workforce, women returned to more traditional roles like homemakers (Cott,
1982: p. 897). While men might have been amiable to the idea of women joining the workforce
in the 1920s, the economic recession that resulted from the 1929 stock market crash quickly
dissuaded them from supporting any woman that might ‘steal’ their job opportunities. Clifford
Odets’ 1934 play, Waiting for Lefty, captures this discontent and animosity felt between men and
women, reflecting the complicated gender dynamics of the time (Odets, 1938: pp. 4-13). In the
first tableau, Odets illustrates the resignation of married women to domestic roles and the ever-
present desire to take up a more ‘masculine’ role through the character of Edna (Odets, 1938: p.
8). Driven to achieve a better situation of living, and discontent with her husband, Joe’s, attempts
to economically position their family so that this dream might be realised, Edna verbally
emasculates him, appealing to his conservative ideas of masculinity by bringing up his failure as
a man to keep his family well-fed (Odets, 1938: pp. 4-10). In this, she takes on a kind of societal
power which is found in the manipulation of man, as she coaxes Joe into vying for a strike at his
union meeting. (Odets, 1938: p. 13). It is clear then, that the interwar period of the 20th Century
saw a movement towards reclaiming traditional gender roles in society, though it was laced with
the discontent of the groups of people that were repressed as a result.
In and following the Second World War, and throughout the bulk of the 20th Century,
America saw the repatriation of conservative ideas of masculinity in relation to military duty
(Nye, 2007: p. 433). This entailed a widespread adoption of the perspective that man’s duty was

to be a noble protector of the home, of children, and especially of wives (Nye, 2007: p. 423). To
fall short of what was required to maintain this hegemonic standing over women and children
was to fail as a man. Consequentially, women were relegated even more completely to docile,
domestic roles in society, lest they wished to risk inciting men’s physical reclamation of their
‘manliness’ that ensued instances of emasculation (Nye, 2007: p. 420).
In Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams, 2009), this trend towards
older, more conservative and patriarchal gender relations in explored, as the characters of
Stanley, Stella, and Blanche respectively adorn the codified behaviour of an extremely masculine
man and of exaggeratedly feminine women. These behaviours act as masks, concealing the true
individual beneath layers of gendered conventions imposed by society. Indeed, the ideal man is
codified as manifesting through aggressive behaviour while the ideal woman is codified as
manifesting through being a willing receptor of masculine energy (Davis, 1994: p. 3). In this
way, the mask that women adorned in Streetcar, and in America following WWII, was one that
satirised their very autonomy, since they were only defined as people insofar as they were linked
to a man. Likewise, the mask that men adorned was that of the soldier, and satirised their
inability to engage in genuine human connection outside the confines of military-like
brotherhood (Nye, 2007: pp. 419-420). It is evident in Tennessee Williams’ play, then, men and
women did adopt the masks of codified gender norms, but these masks were made of flesh and
bone, not of wood or leather, and rested within the very structures of their faces.
In the end, the codified behaviour of men and women as presented in Commedia
dell’Arte and Italian Renaissance Drama as well as the codified behaviour of men and women in
plays following the end of the Second World War, like A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams,
2009), were both directly influenced by the martial conflicts that preceded them. Thus, it is clear

that war has historically been accompanied by rapid developments in the field of codified gender
behaviours and dynamics, often establishing within popular performance, a set of gendered
masks that can be worn by the players (or other conventionalised actions that function the same
as masks).

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