The history of the harlequinade, volume 2 (of 2) by Maurice Sand
"The history of the harlequinade, volume 2 (of 2)" by Maurice Sand is a historical and theatrical study written in the mid-19th century. It explores the lineage, traits, costumes, and stage business of commedia dell’arte figures and their European offshoots, blending scholarship with anecdotes about performers and productions. This volume especially follows the “old man” masks (like Pantaloon and the Doctor), their transformations across regions, and the transition from improvised comedy toward
musical theatre and the cantatrice. The opening of the book traces the comic “old man” archetype from Greek and Roman comedy to the Italian stage, then concentrates on Pantaloon—his Venetian roots, miserly and credulous temperament, stock scenes and pranks with Harlequin, social variants (from shabby shopkeeper to Don Pantaleone), costume shifts, and notable interpreters through the centuries. It next profiles related types: the Bolognese Doctor (pedant or quack, spouting macaronic Latin), Naples’s Pangrazio Biscegliese (a provincial butt), the miserly Cassandro, Rome’s polished puppet Cassandrino, Venice’s marionette Facanappa, Sicily’s Baron, and French counterparts like Gaultier-Garguille and Guillot-Gorju, always tying character to costume, dialect, and stage tradition. The narrative then turns to the Cantatrice, sketching how sung drama evolved from Greek choruses through Italian interludes into opera buffa, and how these forms mingled with comic masks; it recalls Mazarin’s importation of Italian opera to Paris, interlude business with Scaramouche, and emblematic performers from “Babet la Chanteuse” to Madame Favart, alongside lively anecdotes and composer namechecks that anchor the history in performance. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Translation of the second part of: Masques et bouffons.
Credits
deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Reading Level
Reading ease score: 69.8 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read.
