This documentary history brings together a large selection of documents illustrative of the activities of the Italian companies. Each group of documents is prefaced by an introductory account to place them in context, and provides the history and characteristics of the Commedia dell'arte

An account of Commedia's origins as a popular theatrical form, plus a practical, step-by-step guide to using Commedia techniques in performance. The text provides sample monologues and explains each stock character's type in turn.

Carlo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes.

Tracing the beginnings, growth and influence of the 'Commedia dell'arte' Duchartre describes the improvisation, staging, masks, scenarios, acting troupes, and characters that made up this special form of the theatre.

The author describes the old masks of the Commedia dell'Arte - Arlecchino, Pantalone, Brighella, Tartaglia - that were chosen as interlocutors of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the Venetian Theatre of the Eighteenth century.

This book explores the commedia dell'arte: the Italian professional theatre in Shakespeare's time. The actors of this theatre usually did not perform from scripted drama but instead improvised their performances from a shared plot and thorough knowledge of individual character roles. Robert Henke closely analyzes hitherto unexamined commedia dell'arte texts in order to demonstrate how the spoken word and written literature were fruitfully combined in performance. Henke examines a number of primary sources including performance accounts, actors' contracts, and letters, among other documents.