The Comedia De Art has deep roots that lie obscure in just what happen to popular performance during the repression of the arts by the church with the colapse of the Roman Empire. My own basic feeling about this is that I would no more assume the non-existence of players during the prohibition of plays than I would assume the nonexistance of whiskey during a prohibition of booze. Wat we do know about the plays is that performers didn't work from scripts, although they may have had occassional speaches that they read such as Pantalones speach in the Garden or Columbines speach by the river. Such speaches might be modified and reused in other plays in which it was felt that they would aide the plot. For the most part the players would get by by knowing the characters and how they speak, what phrases they perfered to use and so forth so that they just did what came natural to the chracter under the circumstance. This required type casting as a prerequisite as an actor or actress could hardly expect to get so far under the skin of more than one or two characters. It also required the Lazzi, tricks or literally ribbons that tied the action together they could be stunts such as a famous lazzi where Harliquin woulld do a backflip while holding a glass of wine without spilling the wine from the glass or something more resembling a vuadeville or burlesgue comic skit, such as Lou Costello's counting money counting trick tha could ward off any creditor. A writer could direct a lazzi that he knew the players could perform and so move the scenario ahead with it. The Lazzi also served the purpose of saving the scene if improvising players reached a back alley in the dialogue,,,say the play is being bogged done in some discussion with the players not knowing where to take it, some zany leaps up, or even onto the stage and begins chasing someone with a bucket of what complaining that he cheated him in poker or what have you. This distraction pulls everyone away from the actors who hash out quickly what to do to save the scene, the Lazzi comes to an end and they then go on with the show. The improvisation could not go on without these stand bys.
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