The Commedia dell'Arte in Naples: A Bilingual Edition of the 176 Casamarciano Scenarios

The Italian comedy (Commedia dell'arte), an improvised performance art that flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries, vanished leaving very few traces. What remain, besides some intriguing descriptions, are about a dozen manuscript collections of plot outlines, or scenarios, often written in dialect, which the Italian professional actors must have used to guide them through each drama, from scene to scene and act to act. Only a few such collections have ever been published in Italian, far fewer still in English translation. The present volumes remedy this situation by providing bilingual access to the largest known collection of scenarios: the Casamarciano manuscripts of Naples.