Orality and Print: Singing in the Street in Early Modern Venice *

This chapter describes 'normal' mode for the language of scenarios or at least for Flaminio Scala in particular; and indeed the vast majority of his texts do fit into the quite simple pattern. The act of assessing a balance between inputs into a text which may be classified as 'oral' or 'written' assumes on the face of it a single, fixed polarity. An even more special status is possessed by a class of text which is probably peculiar to the early modern period, and to Italy the scenario which was regularly put together by professional theatre companies. The words of the scenario itself have the quality of a technical manual, of a set of instructions: it says things like 'At this point, the Capitano rants', or 'Isabella complains', or 'Zani does his gags'. In the case of the 'mad scenes', Scala wished to give his readers a commemorative sample of Isabella Andreini's virtuoso displays.