ABSTRACT
Perhaps there are elements of national pride in the older Italianist scholarship’s defence of the comici/buffoni split underpinning the consecutive model of commedia dell’arte development. But the permeable pyramid model is gaining ground. Despite many indications that it offers a better evidential fit, unequivocal documentary evidence concerning the exact nature of the relationship between early modern commedia dell’arte and charlatan entertainment has proved elusive and open to varied interpretation. Most written documentation concerning mountebanks offers no more than small scraps of information regarding performative aspects. Outstandingly different in this respect are the theatrical descriptions of two writers, who bring into sharper focus selling and performing strategies of mountebank troupes combining commedia dell’arte performances with quack activity, Thomas II Platter (1574-1628) and Hippolytus Guarinonius (1571-1654). Perhaps not coincidentally, both were physicians. Taken as a whole, the numerous short allusions to the commedia dell’arte in Guarinonius’s medical treatise of 1610, unusually written in the vernacular, add up to the most vivid and substantial pre-1700 record of professional comic stage business.1 Rut Keiser’s scholarly complete edition of the 1604-1605 fair-copy manuscript of Platter’s travel journal, now in the University Library Basle, was published in 1968.2 Like many early modern travellers, Platter repeatedly describes mountebanks. Unusually, his account features detailed eyewitness descriptions of the actual stage routines of an identifiable troupe.On 16 September 1595, Platter left his home town Basle to study medicine in Montpellier.3 Having qualified, he followed a short period of professional practice in Uzès with his Grand Tour, returning
1 Guarinonius, Grewel. 2 Basle UL, Aλ7&8; Platter, Thomas Platter d. J.: Beschreibung der Reisen. It
postdates several incomplete, unreliable, French and English translations. 3 The dates in Platter’s account conform to the customs of the country he is in. At
this period, Swiss dates are ten days behind those of the Gregorian calendar, which had already been adopted in, for example, France. In Protestant regions, the Julian calendar
to Basle on 15 February 1600. His father Thomas I Platter (c.1499-1582), keenly interested in music and the theatre, was a Basle schoolmaster who regularly staged plays acted by his pupils. Thomas I may have used journal records to compile his well-known autobiography in 1572, and his oldest son, the distinguished Basle physician Felix Platter (1536-1614), revised his own student journals in 1612. Following this family tradition, Platter, an acute and reliable observer, kept a detailed diary of his travels through Europe. As an educated traveller of his time, he diligently recorded unfamiliar customs, and as a trained physician he had a lively professional interest in spectacle with any sort of medical slant, including the activities of quacks. And as an appreciative dependant, Platter spared no trouble in writing up details of particular interest to his half-brother Felix, who took over his upbringing, financing his studies and travels, and had likewise inherited their father’s love of the performing arts.
