Sampson, LM; (2015) Amateurs meet professionals: Theatrical Activities in late sixteenth-century Italian Academies. In: Earle, TF, (ed.) The Reinvention of Theatre in Sixteenth-Century Europe: Traditions, Texts and Performance. (pp. 187-218). Routledge: Abingdon, UK.

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Abstract

This chapter explores the complex and still obscure relationship between Italian literary academies, which often engaged in amateur theatricals, and professional actors who formed part of the new theatrical companies (commedia dell’arte) which emerged on the theatrical scene at around the same time (1540s). By exploring particularly the cases of the professional actors Adriano Valerini, Isabella Andreini and her son Giovan Battista Andreini, it is argued that some academies by the end of the sixteenth century showed greater openness to comici and particularly to female virtuose performers. This would lead at the start of the following century to changes in the relation between professionals and amateurs, especially where academies themselves became more hybrid. This essay opens a new area of research by making connections between ‘learned’ and ‘professional’ theatre, which are typically studied discretely. The evidence is drawn extensively from new archival data as well as early printed sources. It presents an initial hypothesis which should be of interest to scholars of early modern theatre and appears in an interdisciplinary volume featuring a range of international and distinguished scholars from across Europe and including studies on English drama.

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