ABSTRACT
In a literary episode in Fabio Glissenti’s Discorsi Morali, the main protagonists, a philosopher and a courtier, visit the Venetian home of just such a celebrated actress. They engage the famous star, whose stage performances in comedies,
tragedies and pastorals have long attracted rave reviews, in lengthy discourse.2 Glissenti, a physician who was also a prolific playwright, wrote from personal knowledge of the comici.Two woodcuts in his book depict the actress and the philosopher seated in conversation.3 In one the courtier sits with them and two maids hover in a background door opening, while a tambourine-shaking Death towers above the three seated speakers. In the other (Plate 43), the courtier stands behind the philosopher, and the maids, led by Death, stand in attendance behind the actress. In both, possibly as a darkly comic allusion to the then widespread practice of casting male actors in the role of the commedia dell’arte maid, Death, more usually (as, for example, in the right and left-hand images of Plate 44) depicted as an ungendered skeleton or with clear iconographic cues identifying him as a male, is here costumed as a domestic maid. Glissenti’s Venetian actress cogently defends her profession, presenting her side of the case for acting and actresses and blaming the corruption of the modern stage on the predominantly all-male buffoni.4 Closer readings of key texts such as Glissenti’s are contributing to an increasing recognition of the substantial degree to which the commedia’s success and influence relied on the commercial and creative alliance of actors and actresses.
