d variety
actors.[2139] At the end of the sixteenth century the Italians,
"suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy,
sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in
dialectical niceties, and immortalizing street jokes by the genius of
masked comedy."[2140] The _commedia del arte_ took this course. It was
open to every chance of political and social influence. It became the
recognized Italian comedy and was transported to the north as such. In
each province of Italy the fixed characters were independently
developed, so that variations were produced. The type of play reached a
climax in the middle of the seventeenth century. Then it declined for
lack of competent actors. It was the realism of everyday life. It tended
always back again to the mountebanks, jugglers, rope dancers, etc.[2141]
The _lazzi_ were "business" which gave the actors time to improvise. In
the sixteenth century Italian comedians began to play at Paris in
Italian. The Italian actresses undressed on the stage much and often, so
that "Italian comedy" came to mean vulgar and licentious comedy. The
Parlement of Paris held that the plays were immoral. Many of them are
said to have been obscene.[2142] Madame de Maintenon having heard that
they were immoral, they were forbidden in 1697.[2143] The Italian comedy
struggled on, however. For a long time no women visited it, but in the
eighteenth century a comedy called _Arlequin, Empereur dans la Lune_
became celebrated. It was a satire on the France of the time. Women
ignored the grossness for the sake of the satire.[2144] The plays of the
Italians were all either farces for pure fun or satires on the mores of
the time. "Many were satires on women." In one of these last, the saying
was ascribed to Aristotle, upon seeing a tree from the limbs of which
four women were hanging, "How happy men would be, if all trees bore that
fruit." Women were currently represented as empty-headed, vain, fond of
pleasure, frivolous, and fickle. Lawyers were also a favorite object of
satire.[2145] In the Italian theater ecriteaux were hung up, on which
the speeches were written and the audience joined in singing the
couplets.[2146]

+668. "Commedia del arte" in Italy.+ In Italy the _commedia del arte_
went through many vicissitudes. At Venice, late in the eighteenth
century, Gozzi undertook to revive it by composing what he called
"fables." They were fairy extravaganzas, based on M