Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Plays and Players in Modern Italy: Being a Study of the Italian Stage as Affected by the Political and Social Life Manners and Character of to-Day
Before that little which is to be said on stage history has been set down, it is a little difficult to define the scope of the work intelligibly and without repetition. The range of the Italian theatre is exceedingly wide, and to treat of it all, historically and descriptively, would need volumes. There is a small and outlying Class of play which is in every sense a popular one - that is to say, in which the people (with a big P arrange the spectacle themselves, and in which actors and audience are of the same class. These plays are only brie?y referred to in the text, but a few notes will be found on the subject in an appendix. Then there is the theatre in our ordinary English sense, which divides into three parts. But the difficulty of keeping the distinctions are considerable: firstly, because one part is far and away the greater; and secondly, because the other two - from a student's point of View at the opposite extremes - are historically linked together. We have, then, firstly, the theatre of conventional types, in which certain personages - such as Arlecchino, Brighella, Stenterello, &c. - whose clothes, manners, and part in the drama remain always the same, or nearly so; thirdly.
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