ermaids. These characters and their established
costumes were derived from different cities of Italy, and were traditional
from the earliest appearance of the _Commedie dell' arte_. Thus,
the father, Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant, the doctor, a lawyer
or professor from learned Bologna, and Brighella and Harlequin,
Bergamasque servants as stupid as the corrupt or saucy maid-servants
and lovers from Rome and Tuscany were sharp. Lance and Speed in "Two
Gentlemen of Verona" are good specimens of these characters. The
merchant and the doctor, called in Italian "the two old men," always
wore a mantle. Pantaloon, or Pantaleone, is a corruption of the cry,
_Plantare il Leone_, (Plant the Lion), to the sound of which, and
under shadow of their banner, the Lion of their patron St. Mark, the
Venetians had conquered their territories and wealth. Pantaloon was the
impersonation, however, not of fighting but of trading Venice, and wore
the merchant costume still in use, with but slight modification, in
Goldoni's day. The dress of the doctor was that of the lawyers of the
great university, and the strange mask which was worn by this character
imitated a wine-mark which disfigured the countenance of a certain
well-known legal luminary, according to a tradition extant among the
players in Goldoni's time. Finally, "Brighella and Arlecchino," called
in Italy Zanni,[1] were taken from Bergamo as the extremes of sharpness
or stupidity, the supposed two characteristics of the inhabitants of
that city. Brighella represented a meddlesome, waggish, and artful
servant, who wore a sort of livery with a dark mask, copied after the
tanned skin of the men of that sub-Alpine region. Some actors in this
part were called Finocchio, Scappino (Moliere's Scapin), but it was
always the same character, and always a Bergamasque. Arlecchino, or
Harlequin, too, had often different names, but he never changed his
birthplace, was always the same fool, and wore the same dress, a coat
of different-coloured patches, cobbled together anyhow (hence the
patchwork dress of the modern pantomime). The hare's tail which adorned
his hat formed in Goldoni's time part of the ordinary costume of the
Bergamasque peasants. Pantaloon's disguise was completed by a beard of
ridiculous cut, and he always wore slippers. It is in allusion to this
that Shakespeare calls the sixth age of man, "the lean and slippered
pantaloon."

[1. Jacks; Zanni being a nickname for Giovanni, John.]