Masters, Lovers and Servants

Subverting the Symbolic Order in the Commedia dell’Arte

The essence of the commedia dell’arte (if we can indeed find an essence) is captured by its unique
mode of representing contemporary forms of social power. It was, in its origin, a synecdoche that
attempted to reveal the flow of social power in iconic form. That is to say that each of the characters
individually represented a particular social formation and the characters in ensemble represented the
whole of society as revealed in the relative distribution of power among each player. Who can act
and who cannot? What enables power to express itself and what inhibits it?

The workings of social power have been theorized historically in a variety of ways, from Plato to
Machiavelli, Hobbs to Rousseau, Hegel to Marx, Nietzsche to Freud, Foucault etc., each offering
something unique to the understanding of the way in which social power is conceived. Here, I will
take a look at the implicit theory that underlies the basic structure of commedia dell’arte. Of course I
do not want to suggest that the creators of this unique art form were departing from an abstract
theory of power, but rather, working backwards from the practice and the form, we can suggest ways
to think about the implied theory that buttresses the actuality; to reveal something about the
worldview that enabled the commedia form to have such an impact in the popular imagination. The
purpose of this exercise is to explore whether this form is valid in expressing power configurations
today and if so, what might it look like.

Generally speaking individual social power operates on two levels: it is the power of the individual to
act towards others and the power of the individual to affect the way in which others act towards
itself. The King asserts his personal power in the certain knowledge that he possesses royal blood;
others act toward the King in a subservient manner because they see his crown. These two modes are
not independent. Most often one is the necessary correlate of the other. As the saying goes: if I think
I am the king of France everyone will think me mad, but if everyone thinks me to be the king of
France, I am indeed, the king of France. In the first case, I believe my blood is royal and act as
though I have its power. But, this power in itself is invisible to others, it is what gives me the impulse
to act, but this alone does not demand that others submit to my power. What I lack are the external
expressions or visible attributes of power: the crown, the throne, the royal stockings etc. So, power
operates both visibly and invisibly: enter the Masters: Capitano, Dottore, Pantelone.
Capitano, detto Spaventa, Spaccamontana, Cocodrillo etc. is a character who possesses all of the
outward signs of power, military power specifically: his name, his stance, this exaggerated uniform
with oversize boots, oversized sword, oversized hat with too many feathers, his improbable stories of
conquest, all the way down to his oversize phallic nose. He possesses all that is visible and necessary
that should, in principle, force others to submit to his superior force. However, the comic function
is that Capitano does not possess the other element—the invisible element—the element that makes
power truly operative. Inside the ego of Capitano we know, and know he knows, that he is a mere
coward without the true power that is derived from knowing one has God’s will behind him, or
patriotism, or the higher mission of civilization or any of the so called higher (invisible) orders that
can motivate true courage. What is inside is not matched by what is outside and we sense
immediately that there is an inverse relationship between the degree of visible power as iconically
expressed in his outward appearance and the lack of invisible power possessed by the individual.
Capitano exists in and through the bluff and his power affects others only so long as the illusion of
greatness lasts. This oscillation between visible presence of power and the invisible absence is
comically played in the voice and body of the actor that alternates between the shout and whimper,
the thrusting of the chest and quivering of the knees. (ego)

Pantelone is in many respects the opposite of Capitano. The source of Pantelone’s real power is in
fact found in what can not be seen, the invisible power of money; money which indeed he is careful
to protect and hide from sight. His outward appearance—iconically the miser-- on the other hand is
decrepit, empty, protective, suspicious and even paranoid. He is an impotent old man suspicious of
everyone’s envy for his wealth. When he attempts to act in the world his internal source of power is
not matched by his external display. Furthermore, all intercourse with the world is preempted by his
egotistical (subjective) obsession with money. That is to say, he converts everything, including all
human relationships, into exchange values.

Dottore’s presumed power is derived from his absurd attempt to control meaning verbally,
specifically the higher orders of knowledge. In this sense his power is in its external display. But his
knowledge is not unlike that of the priest, it is otherworldly, philosophical, esoteric almost non-
corporal in that there is no visible grounding to his discourse. But, Dottore is above all driven
internally by his bodily appetites revealing the incongruity between knowledge as heightened ideology
and knowledge as practice. What is found internally in Dottore is expressed by Cervantes in the
interplay of two characters: Sancho and Don Quixote. 1

All three characters are the embodiments of specific social contradiction. The force of military
power, the force of money and the force of knowledge/ideology are specifically undermined or
subverted in the body of each character. Those theories that attempt to explain the commedia
dell’arte as an expression of eternal human archetypes will entirely miss what I think is essential to
grasping the success of the commedia and ultimately its failure. The commedia troupes were playing
with very distinct regimes of meaning as expressed in each of the character types. These regimes do not
have their origin in universal archetypes but are socially/historically constructed and renewed each
day through the interplay of real power relations that one observes in daily life. These regimes of
meaning are made up of various discursive structures or symbolic orders. In this case we have three
distinct symbolic orders: the regimentation of society as a military order, the reduction of society to
universal exchange value, and the denial of corporal appetites in abstract theories. The dramaturgy
of the commedia clearly delineates these distinct symbolic orders and reveals them in their pure form,
thus the use of the iconic mask and the iconic body.2 And by revealing them in their pure form they
are able to clearly reveal or rather subvert each symbolic order as internally contradictory. Not only
is each character the embodiment of a fundamental contradiction in society, each is in contradiction
with the other. Thus, a significant part of the comic is the interplay between the characters as each
interprets the actions of the other through their own distinct regime of meaning, making
communication between them comically impossible.3


























































1
In Italy every region has a dish that is calls Strozzaprete meaning priest stranglers. The dish differs in
every region but is believed to be so good that the pious/gluttonous priest would strangle himself.
2
Judith Butler and other postmodern feminist writers offer a valuable insight with the concept of the
“gendered body” which is to say that the body itself is “written upon” socially, absorbing the
attributes of gender in the physical performance of daily life. This concept is easily transferred to the
commedia characters as Capitano’s “militarized” body, Pantelone’s “bourgeoise” body, the
subservient body, the rebellious body, etc.
3
Reality aligns itself along the axis of the symbolic order as internalized by the subject, if the order
changes reality itself is revealed to the subject in another way. Terri Gilliam’s movie Eric the Viking
plays with this concept with great acuity. When the Vikings undertake a voyage to Valhalla to speak
to the Gods they take along a Christian monk. Upon reaching Valhalla the monk sees and hears
nothing while the Vikings enter the great palace and talk to the Gods. The monk cannot see what
everyone else sees because his belief system does not allow him to see. This makes communication
between them impossible. We might say that comedy here is operating in the epistemological breach
where it often finds itself.

Here it is important to remember that the commedia dell’arte in its origin was a Renaissance art
form, that is to say its worldview was humanistic. By subverting each symbolic order, we are always
brought back to the human, not the human as pre-defined by another symbolic order, but the human
as it wants to be. It is completely anachronistic to believe that the commedia troupes had a theory of
archetypes. If such a theory were expressed it would simply constitute one more regime of meaning
that they would have subverted in order to reveal the human.

The Lovers are not strictly speaking iconic of any particular mode of power. They are themselves
strangely the victims of power in a similar way as the servants are victims. They are the embodiment
of the constant tension of a sublimated sexuality. They are unable to consummate that to which we
all can relate due to the complex interference of the masters and their own absurdist romanticism. It
is often the essential drive of the lovers, a drive for which we all identify, that caries the comedy
forward. The sometimes-charming absurdity of their romanticism is of course one of the central
themes of Don Quixote itself.

Zanni, Pulcinella, Arlechino and all the servants of the commedia dell’arte represent all that is
outside the symbolic orders. All power in order to operate requires objects on which its power acts.
In this case, the objects are the servants themselves. They are not iconic in the same way that the
three orders of power are iconic. It is in fact their unique and crucial role in the comedy to subvert
the various regimes of meaning by destroying the symbols of power. Here one can remember Don
Quixote using a soup-pot for his noble helmet. The servants have no investment in the symbolic
orders of the masters. In fact it is their inability to enter the symbolic order that is the source of their
comedy. 4 It is also in this sense that they are the prime agents of subversion. Their stupidity is
actually a refusal to accept the logic of power itself. They are predictably unpredictable as they act
always outside of the accepted regimes of meaning always asserting, that which is charmingly human
in all of us.

The Cd’A never posits a positive expression of power (they do not attempt to impose a new
symbolic order) but rather subvert power at every turn; in the sense I think it is fair to say that what
animates the comic subversion in the commedia is the anarchistic impulse of radical humanism.5 To


























































4
Eduardo di Filippo in his Figlio di Pulcinella sandwiches the poor servant between several different
orders of meaning where the comedy is based on Pulcinella’s inability to make the transfer between
competing symbolic orders during an election.
5
To say never is an exaggeration of course. The commedia as it evolved did indeed reinforce a
positive expression of power as many troops were patronized by the rich and powerful themselves. I
reveal that the emperor has no clothes releases us from the domination of the royal illusion. We can
of course immediately see why such spectacles were instantly popular in the market-place.

The brilliance and the complexity of the commedia dell’arte was their ability to be fully cognizant of
the intricacy of power as a labyrinth of social forces that act both visibly and invisibly through
various identifiable regimes of meaning: costumes, dialog, modes of physical performance etc. Their
art was in their ability distill the social contradictions of power in the bodies of the actors, to reveal
the social forces at their point of weakness which is always the relentless intrusion of the human as a
sensual being full of common appetites and desires.

If we were interested in a contemporary expression of commedia dell’arte we would first need to

jettison the characters as they have been bequeathed to us as the fixed types with their charming
masks. Today these masks are entirely anachronistic in that they are iconic only of themselves and
their own history.6 No longer do they represent the performance of power in contemporary society.
If one were to reinvent the commedia dell’arte today, it would begin by studying the real expressions
of power. Look at the accountants, bankers, stock-brokers and financiers of today, not the Venetian
merchant of the 17th C.7 One must imagine their desires, their view of the world, the source of their
power, their anxieties, their fears, their secrete humiliations. What is iconic in their being, how can
they represent a powerful symbolic order that expresses itself both visibly and invisibly? Look at the
fundamentalist preacher and his fawning flock who embody the most flagrant contradictions and
hypocrisies in modern society; what power do they have, how do they maintain it, what is their fear,
weakness and how is it expressed in their bodies and social interactions? Look at the marginally
employed youth whose only hope for the future is a part-time job in a fast food restaurant; how does
power act on them, what keeps them subservient, how is this expressed in their bodies and their
social interaction? How and where does the human relentlessly assert itself in the midst of this
deployment of power?


























































am referring to the commedia troops who were appealing to the popular audiences of the market
place and not dependent on wealthy patronage.
6
This is not to say that masks in themselves are anachronistic, masks have an extraordinary
dramaturgical power. It is only to say that the classical commedia dell’arte masks themselves are too
embedded in their own unique history to be easily utilized in contemporary performance.
7
The proof of the anachronism of the classical masks is that students rarely know who or what they
represent when they are first introduced to them. In order to understand them they need a rather
ponderous lesson in European history. A contemporary commedia would evolve characters based on
the social experience already embedded in each student. It is precisely this difficulty that makes it
easier to invent the idea of a universal archetype for each mask as history, it seems, is just too damn
difficult!
Actors of the contemporary commedia dell’arte will not only need to train their bodies so that they
are able to inhabit their characters, but they will need to understand the symbolic order which
inhabits that same character. Only by confronting society as it is actually experienced today, will
commedia dell’arte find a real audience. Ask above all, who is your audience? Will they recognize
themselves in the performance?

S. McGehee
Accademia dell’Arte
www.dell-arte.org
June 20, 2010