Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic by James H. Johnson

Author:James H. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Europe, General, History
ISBN: 9780520294653
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

The “beautiful order” of a population aligned in ranks, from kings down to slaves, is immaculately preserved in Gozzi’s fables, whose stratification extends to character and speech. Nobles exhibit magnanimous sentiments and speak in polished verse. The professional classes speak in prose. Members of the popular classes—Arlecchino, Brighella, Truffaldino—improvise in dialect, as the former commedia players had also done, from a sketch. There is little mingling among the ranks, and nothing is said about the human struggles or hopes of those in masks.

This was the social vision that conservatives found threatened late in the century. Its preservation would prompt elites to call for honorable persons to “recover” wearing masks when attending the theater. Gozzi’s commedia characters who regained their masks and those noble spectators asked to do the same were, of course, social opposites. But the motivation was the same in both cases: to preserve hierarchy and protect distinction. Masks eroded individuality and upheld the status quo. This was a point on which Goldoni and his attackers agreed, although their conclusions were vastly different.

By the end of the dispute, another similarity had emerged. Both Gozzi and Goldoni had corralled the lusty irreverence of Italian comedy. In his one concession to Goldoni’s reforms, Gozzi did not reinstate the broad sexual humor of earlier commedia. Whereas Goldoni had replaced it with realism, Gozzi aimed for magic. He achieved this effect by cutting all ties to the everyday world. His plays were designed to seduce and enchant, not to critique or provoke. Audiences were meant to be captivated, swept away, dazzled—and not to think too much. Gozzi followed his fables with a series of Italian adaptations from the Spanish stage of the seventeenth century that continued the formula of imaginary kingdoms, a strongly marked social order, and ample opportunities for improvised slapstick among masked commedia characters.30 These works drew crowds through the 1770s.

In cleaning up commedia dell’arte, Goldoni and Gozzi did much to bury one of the longest associations of the genre, that linking masks to the underworld. By taming the devil in the theater, the playwrights also had a hand in domesticating the other main stage where boisterous Arlecchinos and Pulcinellas regularly performed, Venetian carnival. That pacification was already under way.

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