TEMPORAL COMEDY is a literary curiosity which claims our
attention.

EXTEMPORAL COMEDIES.

It is a curiosity in the history of national genius to discover a people
with such a native fund of comic humour, combined with such passionate
gesticulation, that they could deeply interest in acting a Comedy,
carried on by dialogue, intrigue, and character, _all' improvista_, or
_impromptu_; the actors undergoing no rehearsal, and, in fact, composing
while they were acting. The plot, called _Scenario_, consisting merely
of the scenes enumerated, with the characters indicated, was first
written out; it was then suspended at the back of the stage, and from
the mere inspection, the actors came forward to perform the dialogue
entirely depending on their own genius.[46]

"These pieces must have been detestable, and the actors mere buffoons,"
exclaim the northern critics, whose imaginations have a coldness in
them, like a frost in spring. But when the art of Extemporal Comedy
flourished among these children of fancy, the universal pleasure these
representations afforded to a whole vivacious people, and the recorded
celebrity of their great actors, open a new field for the speculation of
genius. It may seem more extraordinary that some of its votaries have
maintained that it possessed some peculiar advantages over written
compositions. When Goldoni reformed the Italian theatre by regular
comedies, he found an invincible opposition from the enthusiasts of
their old Comedy: for two centuries it had been the amusement of Italy,
and was a species of comic entertainment which it had created. Inventive
minds were fond of sketching out these outlines of pieces, and other men
of genius delighted in their representation.

The inspiration of national genius alone could produce this phenomenon;
and these Extemporal Comedies were, indeed, indigenous to the soil.
Italy, a land of _Improvisatori_, kept up from the time of their old
masters, the Romans, the same fervid fancy. The ancient _Atellanae
Fabulae_, or Atellane Farces, originated at Atella, a town in the
neighbourhood of ancient Naples; and these, too, were extemporal
Interludes, or, as Livy terms them, _Exodia_. We find in that historian
a little interesting narrative of the theatrical history of the Romans;
when the dramatic performances at Rome were becoming too sentimental and
declamatory, banishing the playfulness and the mirth of Comedy, the
Roman youth left these graver pe