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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
The presence of Italian professional actors has, for the second half of the sixteenth century, been signalized in Bavaria, at the Emperor's court in Vienna and at the court of the French kings, in England and elsewhere, but it has not yet been shown that the comedians also included the Low Countries in their wanderings. It is therefore interesting to find that an identifiable troupe visited Antwerp in the year 1576. This year was a particularly critical and turbulent one in the protracted struggle of the Netherlands against Spanish domination, for it was, among other things, marked by the outrages of the Spanish Fury, which started in the week beginning Sunday, 4 November. The period of the Spanish Fury, soon to be followed by the negotiations of the Pacification of Ghent, constituted the apogee of the leadership of William of Orange. It was in the tense months preceding the sack of Antwerp that Italian actors were performing their plays in the city. By a happy chance the records of their presence, now preserved in the Municipal Archives in Antwerp, have survived because the city authorities had to make sure that the players were not disbanded or mutinous soldiers and so a certain number of Italian merchants residing in the city were asked to stand surety for them. This appears from the so-called Certificatieboeken; that is, books in which statements were entered to ‘certify’ formally that certain people fulfilled temporarily enforced legal requirements. Thus the Certificatieboeken bearing the numbers 36 and 39 contain the following entries relevant to Italian actors.
1. This is the revised version of an article which originally appeared in Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 50 (1972), 796–806. Much of the historical background has been omitted and a few bits of additional evidence have been added.
2. It is a pleasure to record my indebtedness to Dr J. Van Roey, archivist of the Stadsarchief in Antwerp, who, when I enquired of him whether there were any clues to foreign actors in the city records, directed my attention to the documentary material used in this article.
3. The transcription follows the original as closely as possible but to facilitate reading, accents and a very few punctuation marks have been added and capitalization has been regularized. Deleted words or passages are put between square brackets. Interlinear insertions are put between pointed brackets and the marginal note in Certificatieboek Nr. 39 is placed between double pointed brackets. Thus [<Drusian>] indicates an interlinear insertion that was later crossed out. The use of u and v has been modernized and expanded contractions have been represented by italic type.
4. The marginal note is in the left hand margin and carries both above and below it the note: approbo.
5. See De Roover, R., ‘La communauté des marchands lucquois à Bruges de 1377 à 1404’, in Handelingen of the Société d'Emulation de Bruges, 86 (1949), 23–89Google Scholar and Mirot, L., La Sociétée des Raponde, Dine Raponde, in Etudes lucquoises (Paris, 1930), pp. 79–169.Google Scholar
6. See Goris, J. A., Etude sur les colonies marchandes méridionales (Louvain, 1925), p. 407.Google Scholar
7. From a document in the Public Record Office, London, printed in Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations politiques des Pays-Bus et de l'Angleterre, sous le règne de Philippe II (11 vols., Brussels, 1882–1900), VIII, 458.
8. Relations politiques, VIII, 461.
9. See also my article ‘French, Italian, Spanish and German actors and other artists at Ghent’, in Revue Belge de philologie et d'histoire, 44 (1966), 859–99; esp. p. 882. In this article I hazarded the suggestion that these actors were the Gelosi but this guess must now be discarded.
10. Lea, K. M., Italian Popular Comedy (Oxford, 1934), II, 356.Google Scholar
11. K. M. Lea, ibid., I, 274.
12. D'Ancona, A., Origini del Teatro Italiano (Turin, 1891), II p. 464Google Scholar says that in 1576 ‘la peste infieri in Mantova, lasciando 10 mila morti’.
13. There is no space here to deal in detail with the possible ties of Drusiano's troupe with the Gonzaga family. The presence of both Louis, Duke of Nevers (= Luigi Gonzaga) and his illegitimate brother Alessandro, is on record in 1576. They were the brothers of Guglielmo, the reigning Duke of Mantua. See my article in Revue belge, 50, 802–3.
14. Baschet, A., Les comédiens italiens à la cour de France sous Charles IX, Henri IV et Louis XIII (Paris, 1882), pp. 71–2.Google Scholar
15. See Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage (Cambridge, 1923), IV, 154 and II, 262–3.Google Scholar
16. Nicolini's, Fausto Vita di Arlecchino (Milan, 1958)Google Scholar is a general study of the harlequin type, not a biography of Tristano. For a general account of the wanderings of Italian actors see the second volume of I. Sanesi's La Commedia (2nd ed. 1954) and the information on individual actors in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo (Rome, 1954–1962).
17. Lea, K. M., Italian Popular Comedy, I, 278.Google Scholar
18. See Baschet, A., Les comédiens italiens, pp. 109–10.Google Scholar
19. Press-mark V 2–922 rés. Vito Pandolfi reproduces the pamphlet in its entirety in facsimile (except for the many blank pages) in his La commedia dell'arte. Storia e testo (Florence, 1957–61), I, inserted between pages 265 and 264, where it is unfortunately lost because of its not being indexed in vol. VI which is devoted to the ‘conclusione e indici’.
20. Winwood, R., Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I (London, 1725), I, 235.Google Scholar
21. Memorials, I, 267.
22. Quoted by Baschet, A., Les comédiens italiens, pp. 122–3.Google Scholar The letter is in Italian, translated by Baschet, and dated ‘di Parigi li 20 ottobre 1601’. It is found in the Mantuan archives, dossier Francia. Vincenzo's answer, if there was one, has not been traced.
