ABSTRACT
The conception of the commedia dell'arte is connected with the ancient Roman-Greek mime and the erudite Roman comedy. The ancient roots of early modern European comedy, in particular the popular commedia dell'arte in the Roman-Greek mime, are supported by the parallelism at the level of plot and character types between the two. Tracing the lineage of the early modern commedia back to Roman-Greek comedy and mime brings to light the perpetuation and evolution of the Roman comic stock types in the commedia. The Aristotelian theory of comedy acquires particular relevance in the study of early modern comedy, which applies both to Roman comedy and the Italian commedia, can be made by reference to the human typology in Aristotle's Poetics and the similar moral taxonomy in 'The Nicomachean Ethics'. The comparative analysis of Italian and Shakespearean drama emphasizes the relationship between the two axes alazon-eiron and bomolochos-agroikos.
