Commedia dell’arte
Mask work and movement are key in Commedia dell’arte, an Italian comedy tradition that was popular in the Renaissance period. There were a number of stock characters, eg Pantalone and his servant Arlecchino from the play, The Servant of Two Masters.
The relationship between Basil Fawlty and Manuel in the BBC sitcom, Fawlty Towers, is reminiscent of the master-servant relationship in the Commedia dell’arte. The plots were arguably vehicles for a number of comic routines known as lazzi. These were either based on an individual’s habits or on interactions between particular characters that the audience would come to expect. The lazzi were hugely, if not entirely dependent on movement, such as Arlecchino catching and eating a fly in a stylised way, pretending to be a statue as a way of hiding, or getting beaten round the head by his master.
