| 總結: | <p>This thesis examines how the commedia dell’arte manifested in the English imagination in the period 1571-1611. This form of professional, semi-improvised performance practice emerged from Italy in the mid-sixteenth century to capture the hearts of audiences across Europe and introduce regional dramaturgies to the literary and theatrical innovations of the Cinquecento. There are frequent references to the masked stock characters and extemporising routines of the arte in extant English print, and scholars have often found parallels between the dramas and performance practices of English playwrights and Italian practitioners. However, these studies are complicated by the lack of direct exposure to the arte in performance. The Italians made only a handful of visits to England in the 1570s, after which they would not set foot on English soil again for over twenty years.</p>
<p>Utilising methods from contemporary transcultural theory, this thesis approaches the commedia dell’arte as a culturally porous theatrical apparatus of constituent parts that became disentangled from the whole during their migratory journey. These constituent parts were transferred at different rates, at different times and through different means, and as such were adapted and repurposed to the demands of specific cultural and political moments along the way. In other words, the commedia dell’arte did not pass into the English imagination all at once, a direct exchange from one culture to another through sustained exposure to Italian performance, but rather percolated through a series of piecemeal translations and appropriations. As such, this thesis contends that the commedia dell’arte found in extant print and manuscript records in the period has little resemblance to or bearing on the activities of the Italian practitioners on the continent. Rather, it was highly situated and syncretic, constructed by writers and dramatists to interrogate and reflect anxieties over difference, belonging, and what it meant to be English.</p>
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